


Till Human Voices Wake Us: Dani

by ivorygates



Series: Till Human Voices Wake Us [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 07:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/758873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the end of the world as she knows it.</p><p>(An AU set post "Fire And Water".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Till Human Voices Wake Us: Dani

**Author's Note:**

> Jack's old call-sign, the names of his units, and his taste in music come out of one of the SGtM novelizations (I think) but I can't for the life of me remember which one.
> 
> This is one of three versions of is the same story (the exact same story! Really!). This is the genderflip one, and then I wrote it as slash and as gen. What I wanted to see was how - and how much - the gender and sexual orientation of the viewpoint character would change the events of the story, if that's the only thing that's different. If the plot is not about sex, but Daniel's bisexual, will the story play out differently than if he's straight? If it's action/adventure, does it matter if 'Daniel's' a man or a woman? What's going to change?

The last day of her life begins like any ordinary day.

She arrives at The Mountain for a mission to PX-Whatever. She knows that's what Jack calls all of them and that Sammy hates it, but deep in her heart Dani thinks he's right: it's a meaningless string of letters and numbers assigned by the Gate computer that doesn't really represent the planet itself. And most of the time they never do manage to find out what the natives call -- or called -- the planets they visit.

This morning there probably won't be any natives at all. The MALP (Mobile Analytical Lab Platform) went through last week to check for air quality and found none of the indicators that would tell them that there was anybody there. Or any large animals, for that matter. So today will mostly be about taking a quick look around to see if anybody might have been there once and left anything interesting. Like weapons. Jack's big on those.

At the briefing (they're going over everything one more time; she knows damned well Jack didn't listen the first time) Sammy says the Gate computer is being fussy (not quite what she says) and she has to run a full diagnostic on the dialing system (exactly what she says). But apparently 'fussy' doesn't mean Gate travel has to be suspended, and rather than postpone what looks like a really boring mission Sammy probably doesn't need to be there for, Jack suggests making it a threesome and she can join them if she finishes up early and they don't.

Dani wonders if things could have gone differently if Sammy had been with them.  
  


#

They step through.

No matter what happens afterward each time, from the sublime to the ridiculous to the terrifying, the first moment through the Gate, when her reconstituted lungs fill with air again, is always a thrill. The air smells different, the light is subtly strange. Sometimes she's heavier. Or lighter. For some reason, being lighter makes her feel as if she's taller, and of course being heavier makes her trip over her feet a lot.

But this planet is close enough to Earth that she doesn't notice any difference, really. She breathes in, and the air smells a little like wood-smoke and a lot like flowers. Her nose prickles, but her anti-allergy meds come through and she doesn't quite sneeze. The light is bright.

She bounces down the steps of the Gate platform, tapping her quarterstaff on the stones as she goes, Teal'c following. Jack, as usual, stands on the steps surveying his surroundings, still framed by the radiance of the incoming wormhole. In a few minutes she'll be scurrying to keep up with him and they'll all be home by dinnertime. She stops a few yards past the DHD and looks back at Jack. Teal'c stops when she does, turning with her. And so she and Teal'c see the moment when the event horizon flashes from blue to white.

Teal'c knocks her to the ground before she sees anything more.

He lands on top of her: 250 pounds of Jaffa warrior flattening her and driving all the air from her lungs. A moment later he's up and running, shouting Jack's name. _O'Neill_. It's precious seconds after that before she realizes she needs to be up, moving, there's danger.

Disaster.

She's on her feet, staggering, coughing and gagging as she tries to fill her lungs, running toward the Gate, up the stairs that she walked down less than five minutes before. Teal'c is kneeling, and she doesn't see Jack anywhere...

He's here.

Lying prone, as if the blast knocked him flat. There's no need to hurry, because he hasn't just burned, he's been carbonized, like the bodies at Hiroshima, and how is that possible when she and Teal'c are still alive? His MP5, thrown a few feet away, is twisted because the rounds inside have it exploded. She feels heat radiating from it when her hand is inches away.

Teal'c tries to turn him over, but the body just ... breaks.

Teal'c's face is impassive. She's breathing in short ragged gasps as the reality hammers home. Jack O'Neill is dead.

Teal'c stands, and lifts her to her feet. She can barely feel the touch of his hands.

"We must dial Earth at once, Danielle Jackson."

The air smells of charcoal. And something else. It's very quiet here.

Teal'c shakes her roughly, and she gasps in startlement. "Danielle Jackson! We must dial Earth at once! I believe Stargate Command to be under attack!"

"Jack," she says, and it isn't a sentence, it's paragraphs. _Jack would know what to do._ And: _how could Earth be under attack when we were still using the Stargate to come here?_ And: _how can Jack be dead?_

But he is.

Teal'c drags her roughly down the steps to the DHD, and by the time she reaches it, her head is clear enough to do what she has to. She dials Earth. Sammy set the Gate computers up with an answerback system a few months after the Program started that could ping the destination Gate and get its Point of Origin Glyph. So she doesn't have to worry about finding that on any of the planets they visit any more. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

No lock. She waits for the light to fade in the DHD and tries again. And keeps trying, mechanically, until Teal'c takes her hands -- gently this time -- and stops her.

The Stargate isn't working.

He leads her over to a nearby rock out of line-of-sight of the Gate and makes her sit down. Then he goes away, and as she sits there, staring at the sunlight, the rest of the numbness slowly fades, and she realizes he's burying what's left of Jack's body. Realizes -- all over again -- that the Stargate didn't work. That the blast of energy that killed Jack came through the open wormhole from Earth. From the SGC, where Sammy and Janet and Robert and Amelia and Walter and General Hammond and nearly everyone on Earth she knows is.

The DHD lit up -- so the Stargate was working -- but it wouldn't lock. Meaning there's something wrong with the destination Gate. The one on Earth. Not wrong as in 'the iris is closed,' because the iris doesn't keep the Gate from engaging; that's why they have to send their IDCs before they step through. And not wrong as in there's been a power failure at the SGC, because even if power were out everywhere in Cheyenne Mountain (something that's supposed to be impossible), the power for the wormhole comes from the originating Stargate, not the destination one, so that wouldn't matter. Wrong as in _it might not be there._

Or might be completely buried.

She follows the sound of the entrenching tool against earth and stone. Teal'c's filling in the hole he dug, and there's nothing to see. She's glad of that. The hole he's dug is deep--

_but not as long as a man, or as wide; there isn't a man to bury; only pieces of a body pried up from cooling stone_

\--and she gathers stones while he fills it, and when he's done they lay them on top. Not enough for a cairn, but enough to make a top layer over the fresh-turned earth. He walks back and forth over the grave in silence, tamping down the earth and stones. When they're done, she goes back to the Gate.

She dropped her quarterstaff by the DHD. She picks it up now. The wood feels alien in her hands; too large, as if it isn't hers at all. She drops it several times before she gives up trying to hold onto it and props it against the DHD.

She reaches out and touches the dial. And that's when she really starts to believe it. Not that Jack is dead -- that's still too terrible to think about -- but that some monstrous disaster has happened at the SGC, and there's no way for her to get the two of them home and _find out_. They're trapped here somewhere on an alien planet and she doesn't even know how many light-years from home she is because she doesn't think Sammy mentioned that in the briefing, or if she did, Dani wasn't paying attention. And she can't even go home to Abydos, because she told them to seal their Gate against the _Goa'uld_ when she went back to Earth the last time, and besides, how could she go back there and tell Kasuf she isn't looking for Skaara any more?

She leans over the DHD. She isn't going to cry. She's going to throw up.

"What destination do you wish to choose?" Teal'c has come up behind her.

"Maybe we can't go anywhere."

"Nevertheless. I feel it would be prudent to make the attempt."

It's hard to think clearly. Chulak. She wants to go and ask Apophis what the hell he did to her planet. Abydos. She wants to go back to Abydos. They'll unseal the Gate in a year. If she times it right, she can go through then. Kasuf will forgive her.

She hopes.

If the Gate system still works at all.

The SGC doesn't really understand it, although they use it. What if the whole system's just crashed? "Should we wait?" she asks desperately. "Maybe...?" If it's only a malfunction, they'll fix it. Send someone.

"If our enemies have taken possession of Stargate Command, they may find us here," Teal'c answers.

He's right. She and Teal'c need to go somewhere _now_. "The Land of Light," she says slowly. "Councilor Tuplo said we would always be welcome. And Drey'auc and Rya'c are there, aren't they?"

"Indeed," Teal'c agrees. His voice gives nothing away.

She dials. Her hands start to shake as she presses the glyphs. She doesn't know what would be worse: if the Stargate doesn't work or if it does.

Seventh symbol. And the Gate engages. Both of them simply stare at it for a moment. Then she walks up the steps. The MALP is still there, but like Jack's MP5 -- gone now; Teal'c must have buried it with Jack -- it's been fried. The side nearest the Gate is blackened; the treads have melted. All the glass in the panels is gone; there's some on the stone, tiny melted droplets. Other pieces are fragments, cool enough to shatter and retain their integrity. The blast was fast and hot. But it didn't reach the DHD. She touches the MALP. It's warmer than the action of sunlight on metal would account for.

There's no mark on the stones where Jack's body lay. No blood. Nothing.

She walks through. On the other side it's dark; she'd forgotten it would be. But torches burn beside the Gate, so there's light to see by. She dials Earth from here, hoping, but the chevrons won't lock. Teal'c looks disapproving; she knows he wants to object. She doesn't care. And he doesn't say anything.

There are lanterns in the forest now. The path back to the Light Side is neatly kept, edged with lamps of glowing pale stone. The Mykene don't use glass for many things, but they work alabaster in the traditional fashion of the Ancient World.

She and Teal'c reach the Light Side, and the two of them walk up the hill toward the Palace. Teal'c's symbiote will protect him from the histaminalytic virus here, and the SGC has taught the Mykene to refine an herbal cure from native plants, so not only is there no chance she'll devolve again, she won't have any allergic reactions to the local plants once her own supply of antihistamines runs out.

Lucky her.

#

High Councilor Tuplo and his wife Leedora greet the two of them with puzzled delight. Tuplo asks where Jack and Sammy are. Teal'c says they are not with them, which is typical; Teal'c states the obvious making it seem like a profound dispensation of wisdom. Tuplo waits for more, but when it becomes obvious there isn't going to _be_ more, says he will send for Drey'auc and Rya'c. While they're waiting for them, Dani explains to Tuplo that she and Teal'c need to stay here for a while, if it's okay with him. Tuplo is delighted to have them as guests, and says they may stay as long as they wish. She thanks him for his kindness; the words come automatically to her, but it feels as if someone far away is speaking.

Rya'c is so happy to see his father again. He shows off the baseball glove Jack gave him. Jack had been going to teach Rya'c baseball, but there'd never been time. Drey'auc is more suspicious about the reason for Teal'c's unannounced arrival. She obviously wants an immediate explanation for why they're here.

"Something," Dani begins, speaking to both of them, Tuplo and Drey'auc -- and to Leedora, and the rest of the court, all of whom are gathered here -- Melosha is here, too; she leans against her father, looking worried. "Something may have happened on Earth. We don't know. We were on a mission through the Stargate--" Tuplo's people are a little vague on the concept of 'planet' "--when there was an accident and we, um, well, we couldn't get home."

"What about the others who travel with you?" Drey'auc asks. Drey'auc knows Jack and Sammy. She's visited the SGC. She knows there should be four members of SG-1.

Dani opens her mouth to answer, and she simply ... can't.

"Colonel O'Neill is dead. Captain Carter was at Stargate Command and her fate is unknown, as is the fate of the _Tau'ri_." If they're waiting for more, they won't get it. It's practically the longest speech she's ever heard Teal'c give among strangers.

"Have your enemies followed you here?" Tuplo asks, after a moment.

"They have not," Teal'c says firmly.

Dani stares at the floor.

"Husband, what will you do?" Drey'auc asks.

"A wise warrior considers before he acts," Teal'c answers.

#

She's looking up at the stars. No way to tell which one is home. Jack used to say he'd look for Abydos, in the year he was retired and she was there. No way for him to tell which light in the sky was Abydos, either.

The sun never sets in the Land of Light. The sun never moves, actually, because the planet doesn't rotate. The habitable area of the planet is a belt of land about fifty miles wide that circles the entire planet at the equator. A little more of it is on the light side than the dark. Outside of that, the entire planet is desert where nothing lives.

She's gone to the dark side to see the stars. If she went farther into the dark side, she knows, she would see snow; the Mykene have always made journeys into the forest to quarry snow and ice. The dark side is locked in an eternal Ice Age. Now that the Touched are cured and gone, ice-mining is safe and easy.

She only wants to see stars.

Teal'c has gone to Drey'auc's house. He has a family to return to, at least. Her family has become Stargate Command and SG-1. They're gone. At least she thinks they're gone. _Jack_ is gone. She hugs herself tightly, trying to crush away the stunning loss. She's not a soldier; god knows she's gotten used to death since the first time she saw the suns in the sky of Abydos, but what she doesn't know is what to _do_ about it. They're supposed to fight the _Goa'uld_ , but she isn't completely sure the _Goa'uld_ are responsible for this. And even if they are, she's an archaeologist with three full clips for her Beretta, a trench-knife, and a quarterstaff. Not much of a threat. (And marooned on the other side of the Galaxy. Don't forget that.)

She keeps trying to come up with a plan, but this is disaster, and that was always Jack's job. Or Sammy's. She was Jack's Second in Command.

Sammy was back at the SGC when this happened.

Dani won't think about that now.

All the plans she can come up with start with getting back to the SGC somehow. And she can't do that.

#

"Danielle Jackson."

She comes to with a gasp, flailing, and realizes she'd fallen asleep where she was, sitting on the ground in the forest. She's cold and stiff and she's knocked her glasses askew.

Teal'c is standing over her holding a lantern. He holds out a hand. She takes it, and he draws her to her feet.

"Uh. Teal'c." Her voice sounds rusty and her throat aches. "I fell asleep."

"It is most unwise to sleep in the forest. Since the departure of the Touched, I am told many large forest creatures have become bold and importunate in their behavior."

"'Importunate'." He's holding her quarterstave. She reaches for it. At the moment, she could use the support. "I can take care of myself."

Teal'c says nothing.

"How did you find me?" she asks. She's nowhere near any of the forest paths.

"Councilor Tuplo informed me you had mentioned wishing to go for a walk. It was a simple matter to follow your trail. Come."

They walk back out into the eternal day. When she checks her watch, she realizes it's almost tomorrow. They should have been back from the mission hours ago. Debriefed. She would have caught up on her work, gone home. Maybe had dinner in the Commissary with Sammy first, or maybe the two of them would have gotten take-out and gone back to Sammy's place. Or maybe they would have brought in some pizza, and watched movies with Teal'c in his quarters.

All four of them.

There's a heaviness in her chest and a tightness in her throat. It's Sha're dead on the stones again, and Dani has killed her. It's her parents dead, leaving her in the hands of a stranger she isn't sure how to please. It's every time her world has come apart and Death has taken away the people she loves. She stumbles, and Teal'c's arm is around her shoulders to steady her. She looks up.

He rarely shows much emotion. It's not like Mr. Spock on _Star Trek_ is supposed to be. It isn't that he doesn't have them. It's that they're supposed to be private things. She hasn't gotten a lot of chance to study Jaffa culture, and now she probably never will, but she knows anything the Jaffa display openly, their _Goa'uld_ overlords can use against them.

Jack called the Jaffa 'myrmidons' once. She'd been stunned to discover he knew the word. But it had fit. Their masters do their best to turn the Jaffa into insects. The Jaffa respond by pretending they don't care; living their lives behind a mask.

Eyes show behind masks.

Teal'c's eyes are on her now, filled with compassion. He's four times her age, victim of the _Goa'uld_ all his life. How many friends has he lost in his lifetime? She nods shortly. She's fine. She'll survive.

"There is a Jaffa word that means 'revenge'. Do you know it?" Teal'c asks.

" _Kel'mar_ ," she says. "You taught it to me."

"You know that it also means 'lifeblood,'" Teal'c says. "To the Jaffa, revenge is life. We will discover who has killed our brother O'Neill. And they will pay. This I promise you, Danielle Jackson. _Kel'mar_."

Her eyes swell as if she might cry, but she doesn't. She wishes she didn't want revenge, but she does. She wants somebody to scream until they drown in their own blood. She takes a deep breath and she's lightheaded. She blinks hard. Her eyes are wet, but it's not quite tears. She's tried so hard not to hate anyone.

She nods again, more decisively. "Yes," she says.

#

It's almost a month later when Teal'c disappears. She's spent the intervening time in not-very-productive ways. Like dialing the DHD every third day. Earth has never responded.

Sha're taught her to spin and weave on Abydos. She was never good at it -- those skills take a lifetime to master, and she was more interested in studying the temple complex -- but she knows enough of the basics to make herself useful among the Mykene weavers. Turning plant fiber and animal hair into cloth is a labor-intensive business; it occupied most of the time of high-born women in the Ancient World, and a good portion of everyone else's as well: when Sha're wasn't preparing food back on Abydos, she was preparing clothes; that was simply how her life was, how everybody's life was in Nagada. Not a struggle for survival, exactly, but constant work. Dani is more useful in the fields here in the Land of Light than in the weaving rooms, actually. Mykene agriculture is based on the step-terrace model; the fields are irrigated by a system of canals and waterwheels, and she's been able to suggest a few improvements to the machinery based on her knowledge of their ancient counterparts. It's little enough repayment for the hospitality she's been shown.

There's a memorial tablet for Jack in the main temple now. Not a votive statue, which would be more traditional among the Mykene. Just a tablet. She marked out the symbols for the stonecarver, so it's in English. His name. The day he died. Earth's Point-of-Origin Glyph. Not much of a memorial for a man who killed a god. She would have added his birthdate, but he'd never tell her when his birthday was, let alone the year. Sammy's was (is? She hopes, but can't bring herself to believe Sammy is still alive) in May, two months before Dani's. They were still trying to work out when Teal'c's was in relation to the _Tau'ri_ calendar, though he'd said it didn't matter as no celebration would be required. Jack had said it was vital, as birthdays were really only an excuse for cake, and cake was good, and she'd said in that case he could stop being such an ass and tell her his damned birthday...

She's started a study of the Mykene. The Mykene make the Jaffa look like the Jetsons; if you take away the ' _Goa'uld_ magic', native Jaffa culture is about at the level of the Early Middle Ages: iron, the windlass pump, the tiltboard plow, and aside from that, simple brute strength and blind religious fervor. The Mykene have about a thousand years less in the way of technological development, and right now are heading directly for disaster: the histaminaylitic virus apparently kept their population down: Leedora has told Dani none of the Touched ever bore or fathered children that she knows of, and about a third of the population fell to the Touched virus every year. As far as SG-8 had been able to tell, the Touched didn't have a long lifespan, either; whether they killed each other or the virus simply wore out their bodies, the forest had been scattered with bones, and none of those who recovered were people who had been infected more than three years before.

But now all those people will be surviving and breeding, and no more will get the virus, and the Land of Light just isn't that big. There's no place for the Mykene to go when the arable strip becomes overcrowded, either, other than through the Stargate, and the best time to do that is _before_ they wreck their planet.

She's not really sure how to explain the concept of 'population explosion' to Tuplo -- or, really, to convince him it's going to be a problem -- and it might not be a problem for several generations. Depending, of course, on what the countryside is like farther from the Gate. They may be looking at starvation and plague within three generations. She has no way to tell.

She wants Sammy.

She wants Jack.

But what she really wants, on the day she hikes down from the palace (where she's living) to Drey'auc's house in the town, is to know where Teal'c went and why he didn't take her with him.

All Drey'auc can tell her is he left that 'morning.' The Mykene have an elaborate and accurate system of clocks -- the Ancient Egyptians did, too, so it's not that surprising -- and mark the passage of the day with horns and gongs. The unceasing noontide in which the palace exists is driving Dani slowly mad, she thinks. She wants days and nights. Boundaries. Something more substantial to mark the passage of time than atonal music. She has her watch, but it's not quite enough.

Drey'auc knows Teal'c took his staff weapon but went dressed in native robes. He left no message for Dani. Dani is not entirely sure Drey'auc would give it to her if there were one. She turns to go.

"Did you take him as your lover?" Drey'auc's voice is harsh.

She turns back to look at Teal'c's wife. The question is so _strange_ (and she's still trying to imagine where Teal'c would go without telling her), that Teal'c isn't the first person she thinks of. It's Jack she thinks of. (But Drey'auc wouldn't ask that.) She realizes she's staring. Just staring, her mind and face both blank, and she has to say something, or Drey'auc will never stop staring back at her and the two of them will stand here forever.

"He isn't my lover."

"There's someone else." Drey'auc sounds reluctantly -- and only partially -- convinced.

"There's no one." She walks away.

She goes to the Stargate. There's nothing there -- no clue to where Teal'c went -- but she likes the dark. She's pretty sure Teal'c went somewhere through the Stargate -- just a hunch -- and he knows -- as far as she knows -- only a limited number of addresses.

She dials Earth.

It's been an effort to keep herself from coming here every 'day' to dial it, though she has, and has considered the fact that she comes here only every seventy-second hour to try the Gate again to be a moral victory of sorts. Because once again there is no lock. Six chevrons and glyphs light. The seventh does not. No Gate on the Earth side. Or buried Gate. And either way, a disaster of epic proportions and she'll never know the details because she has no way of getting home. That would take a spaceship and a pilot who could find Earth.

Teal'c hasn't gone home, and she can't imagine he's anywhere else in the Land of Light; he wouldn't have bothered to take his staff-weapon to go anywhere among Tuplo's people. He's gone through the Stargate, and she can't imagine where.

She dials an address and steps through.

#

Teal'c isn't on the planet they buried Jack on -- but she sits for a while beside Jack's grave. The sun moves across the sky. She's missed that.

She tells Jack she isn't quite sure what she ought to be doing. She tells him she knows he'd want her to survive, and she's doing that, but that she thinks she ought to be doing something more. Fighting the _Goa'uld_? A good idea, but her resources are a little limited right now.

_You work with what you have,_ he says in her mind.

_I had Teal'c, but I kind of lost him,_ she answers. _I don't know where he is._

_Yes you do,_ Jack tells her.

She shakes her head. "He'd be crazy to go there," she says aloud.

But Jack is right, of course. Teal'c has gone to Chulak.

Why? _Kel'mar_. If the _Goa'uld_ aren't responsible for the trouble at the SGC, they have the tools to allow Dani and Teal'c to find out who is. They have spaceships.

She's been to Chulak twice. The first time they just walked right in -- that was before the _Goa'uld_ knew what kind of a threat the _Tau'ri_ could be. The second time, they sneaked in disguised as members of the priesthood of Apophis; the Chulak Gate is guarded all the time now. She speaks fluent _Goa'uld_ , but she's not completely certain she can bluff her way past the guards at the Gate.

Still, she has to try.

#

She is painted and gilded, dressed in the brightest linens Tuplo's household can provide. The Mykene styles are different from those of the courts of Ancient Egypt, but they can be adapted.

Drey'auc has helped her. Dani cannot possibly pass for a Jaffa, but the _Goa'uld_ have human slaves as well. Their human slaves are not branded with their overlord's mark, for many of them are destined to become hosts. Often they are sent on missions for their masters; the Jaffa hesitate to offer them any impediment for fear of the tales they will carry back to the _Goa'uld_. Drey'auc has told Dani all she knows of these _lo'tar_. It isn't much.

It's a full day before Dani's ready to go. Teal'c hasn't returned. She keeps hoping until the last minute he'll show up so she doesn't have to do this. But he doesn't.

Her costume is sheer and tight. No place to hide a weapon. But she can carry a staff. Not a staff-weapon, of course, but though it's carved and gilded and painted and even inlaid with jewels, the staff will be just as deadly as her own quarterstaff in a fight. She hopes.

She isn't wild about going without her glasses. She can see without them, though everything's a little blurry and reading is completely impossible. Managing without them makes her clumsy and awkward, but she has no choice. This kind of physical weakness is unknown in the _Goa'uld_ Empire; the way the _Goa'uld_ correct vision problems is by executing those who have them.

She goes back to the Gate and steps through. There's no one at the Gate on the other side.

_All that work for nothing,_ she thinks, walking down the steps and away from the Gate, but it's about four kilometers to the city, and she might meet someone on the way. A long hike in little gold sandals.

For the first hour she sees no one, and she's starting to think she could just as well have come in her uniform -- in her boots -- and saved herself all this trouble, when a Jaffa woman the size of a house steps out into the road and demands to know who she is and what she's doing here. Apparently the woman never got Drey'auc's memo about leaving the _lo'tar_ alone, because she's pointing a staff-weapon at Dani and looking really pissed.

_"‹There was no one at the Chappa'ai,›"_ Dani answers, which might be evasive, but is also the exact truth.

_"‹Foolish child, did you expect there would be in time of war?›"_ the woman answers. _"‹All the warriors are with my lord Apophis and his great fleet.›"_

This is bad. Because this is something the kind of person she is pretending to be probably ought to know. (Teal'c would have come two days ago and found Apophis gone. But he didn't come back.) _"‹Then my message is no longer needed, and I will return to the court of my lord and tell him so,›"_ Dani answers, glaring. It's easy to feign anger, because her feet hurt and she's pretty sure she's about to be shot. But the woman actually goes to her knees, and Dani feels a pang of shame. There's no honor in terrorizing slaves.

_"‹I meant no offense,›"_ the Jaffa woman says. _"‹How may I aid you and the one you serve?›"_

_"‹I must go to the city. Take me there.›"_

#

It's after dark by the time she can actually get to Master Bra'tac's house, and she's spent the entire day bluffing and evading and playing Connect The Dots as she's been passed hand-to-hand among the Jaffa remaining on Chulak. Women and children. A few -- a very few -- old men.

She doesn't like the picture she's gotten.

Apophis owns more worlds than just Chulak. For almost a year he's been gathering together troops. A few months ago -- just after the last time they were here, actually -- he started shipping his Jaffa off Chulak. Told them they were going to participate in a glorious crusade to destroy their greatest enemy forever. Frankly, she can only think of one group of people who qualify as Apophis's 'greatest enemy.'

The _Tau'ri_.

There's a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the city, and she's supposed to be in her rooms in the Palace. She's slipped out through a window. She needs to find Master Bra'tac -- if he's still here and alive. If she can't find him, she needs to get back to the Palace and look for Teal'c. He's probably stuck in the dungeon, and she certainly knows where that is. She's wrapped herself in the bedspread from her room. Purple with gold fringe, but it's dark, and will cover her exposed skin.

She reaches Bra'tac's door. There are no lights. She knocks, quietly, but there's no answer. She goes down the alley, grateful for the curfew, and hopes she can find a window to climb in through. Sammy was the one who knew how to pick locks, and Dani bets the locks on Chulak would defeat even her skills.

When she gets to the alley that runs along the back wall of the house, a door is opened and she is yanked inside. Slammed against a wall. Knife at her throat.

"Danielle Jackson." It's Teal'c's voice. He's not happy to see her, but at least he tells her what's going on.

Master Bra'tac is not here. Teal'c broke into his house at dusk. He says Master Bra'tac has items he requires. Weapons. Armor. When she gets a good look at him -- as good as she can get without her glasses -- she realizes Teal'c's dressed as a Serpent Guard. The first she's seen here on Chulak. He looks grim. But then, neither of them has had any reason to smile for a long time, have they?

Teal'c has news, none of it good. He went to the temple. There's a priestess there; her name is Shau'nac. Apparently she and Teal'c have a history, enough of one Teal'c could be sure she wouldn't turn him in. She was able to tell him quite a bit, because the _Goa'uld_ speak openly in front of the priesthood. Shau'nac told him all she did because she hopes -- he tells Dani -- he will beg Apophis's mercy and repent. They both know the answer to that. But everything Dani has heard today at the Palace is true. And worse.

The host of Apophis's Queen, Amaunet, is _Tau'ri_. In his first raid on Cheyenne Mountain -- Dani knows from the mission files -- Apophis took an airwoman back through the Stargate with him. She became host to Apophis's Queen.

The _Goa'uld_ have access to all their host's memories.

Armed with the knowledge Amaunet ripped from her host's mind, Apophis rallied the other _Goa'uld_ into an alliance the like of which the _Goa'uld_ Empire has never seen: all twelve System Lords. Hundreds of motherships. Thousands -- tens of thousands -- of Jaffa. Amaunet convinced them they must wipe out the _Tau'ri_ immediately, striking first at the Stargate hidden beneath Cheyenne Mountain.

"A month ago," Dani says.

"Yes," Teal'c says.

"Bra'tac?" she asks. Because she's not going to think about Earth, not now, and Bra'tac is next on her list of things to worry about.

"Shau'nac informed me he has resumed his place as Apophis' First Prime. I must presume his plan is to sow dissent between Apophis and the other System Lords. Their alliance is a fragile one, easily shattered once the moment of victory has passed."

"Once Earth is destroyed," she says. Which Earth has almost certainly been. That blast through the Stargate? The energy-wave from _Goa'uld_ cannon destroying Cheyenne Mountain, pulsed through the open wormhole.

"They are surely fighting among themselves at this very moment," Teal'c says.

"How is that supposed to make me feel better?" she demands.

Teal'c simply looks at her. "While there is life, there is the chance for revenge," he says at last.

They sit together through the night in silence as they have so many times on so many worlds, and in the morning begin the long walk back to the Stargate. In a world of women, children, and old men, few dare to stop or question one of Apophis's Serpent Guards and a _lo'tar_ from the god's court.

She concentrates on tiny things. The blisters on her feet. The fact that she's freezing. They're in danger every moment, but nothing happens. Some missions go that way. Oddly, they're the ones that bring her the worst shakes and nightmares afterward. She doesn't prefer getting shot at, though.

They reach the Stargate. Teal'c retracts the hood of the serpent armor. It's safe now. Pretty much. The area's deserted and they're both armed, him with his staff-weapon, her with a _Goa'uld_ weapon he calls a _zat'nik'atel_. Jack, she knows, would call it a zat.

Would have called it a zat.

Teal'c reaches out and she automatically hands him the zat. She'll need a free hand to dial, and she's still got that ornamental staff. It's been the only thing keeping her upright for the last kilometer or so. Fortunately she can take the sandals off the moment she gets to the other side. The grass is soft and the path is smooth in the Land of Light.

"Tell Drey'auc and Rya'c I shall always hold them within my heart," Teal'c says. "Tell them to be strong."

"I, um, hey, wait," she says, pausing in mid-dial. "Aren't you going to... tell them yourself?"

"Our paths now diverge, Danielle Jackson," Teal'c says. His eyes burn into hers, and she sees something she missed before, and doesn't know how she could have.

"Teal'c, don't you think we should, I don't know, discuss this?" she says quickly. "Because you know Jack--"

"O'Neill my brother is dead at the hands of Apophis," Teal'c says. "Only _kel'mar_ remains." And he sounds so _reasonable_. He sounded reasonable back in Master Bra'tac's house. And back on PX-Whatever. He's sounded reasonable for weeks. She missed the fact he'd gone quietly round the bend.

"They'll kill you. Take me with you." And the fact she gets both sentences out in one breath may mean she's gone crazy too.

Teal'c actually smiles. It's terrifying.

"Klorel seeks you, Danielle Jackson -- you must never allow him to see you or to suspect you yet live. _Never_. Nor do I go to Apophis, but to the stronghold of one of his great enemies. You would not survive there. But I, though I am known to be _shol'va_ , am privy to many of Apophis's secrets, and elsewhere I may yet trade those secrets for my life. The _Goa'uld_ are arrogant enough to believe I would repent in fear upon seeing Earth destroyed, and so I will rise in the ranks of service to another of the False Gods and do as Master Bra'tac has done, sowing dissent among the Jaffa from within. With the destruction of the _Tau'ri_ , this is the only hope of freedom for my brothers, and of vengeance for O'Neill."

"They'll kill you!"

"If I die, I die free. And we two shall be avenged. Go now."

"I am not leaving you," she says through gritted teeth.

The flash of light is the last thing she sees.

#

She wakes up, aching all over from the zat blast, on the ground beside the Stargate in the Land of Light.

Teal'c isn't there.

She sits on the ground for a while, resting her head on her knees. Teal'c has gone off to take on the entire _Goa'uld_ Empire by himself, and this time she knows she won't be able to find him and bring him back.

By now she may be the last _Tau'ri_ left alive. No chance of getting back to Earth, unless the _Goa'uld_ have set up a second Stargate there. If they have, going back would mean she walks back into slavery or implantation. Or, of course, torture and death. No way to know unless she dials Earth, gets a lock, and steps through. And she isn't _quite_ sure whoever-it-is on Earth wouldn't know what Gate was dialing theirs. The SGC never did, but Sammy always said their dialing computer was cobbled together, not like a real DHD. So she doesn't dare dial Earth any more. Not from any place she cares about. She might be leading the _Goa'uld_ straight to it.

Eventually she gets up and goes to give Drey'auc Teal'c's last message.

#

She stays another week, not that there are weeks here. Or days, or months, or seasons, or anything except eternal afternoon in the Land of Light, where everything is peaceful, and prosperous, and radiant, and happy, and calm.

She can't stay here.

She knows....

Hundreds of Gate addresses.

All the ones in the Abydos Cartouche Room. She memorized them before she really knew what they were, the way she's memorized thousands of sequences of symbols in her life. They're all -- they _were_ all -- in the SGC Dialing computer, so they were places the SGC intended to send SG-1, or some other Gate Team. She even knows (specifically) SG-1's next ten projected mission destinations, though they already would have gotten through a lot of them by now if the world hadn't ended. She'll have to do them alone now, because she won't stop. Won't give up. _Kel'mar_. It's all that's left to her now.

Revenge. And she never wanted to want revenge, but Jack and Sammy and -- as a matter of fact -- everyone she has ever spoken to (even in passing) in _her entire life_ is dead. Assuming Nick was still alive, he's dead. Her parents' graves have been either atomized or desecrated. Everyone on Earth is probably dead, though a few -- out of Earth's billions -- may have survived to face lives of torture and slavery at the hands of the _Goa'uld_. And in her mind, it keeps coming down to the image of Jack standing in front of the Event Horizon that day, and how the only thing she was thinking in the moment before he died was that it was going to be a pain trying to keep up with him and Teal'c. The _Goa'uld_ have destroyed her life twice. She is incapable of any more forgiveness.

Teal'c left all his SGC gear here to go to Chulak. She combines his pack with hers. No weapons, but canteens, MREs, all the important things (important in a world without Earth and home). It makes a heavy pack, but there's no place for her to resupply now. Tuplo and his family press additional gifts upon her. Things she will need, and things she will want. A bedroll. A supply of their antihistamine cordial. Drey'auc actually unbends enough to hug her goodbye at the Gate.

"Die well," she says to Dani, since dying is probably what Dani is going to do now, and 'well' is a relative term that can encompass a lot of things.

"I'll try," she says in response.

She thinks about what 'dying well' would be after she steps through the Gate. Comfortably? Or even with dignity? She gives it a moment's thought.

No.

In old age?

No.

Having gotten what she wants?

Yes.

What is it she wants?

All the _Goa'uld_ dead. Earth free and whole.

She's unlikely to get either of these things -- or any of the other wishes on her list, though the complete list is actually fairly short. But maybe they can work out some compromises. Jack was always a big fan of that. Although what he actually meant was she should give in and do it his way. Even now, more than a month after she and Teal'c have buried him, to have her thoughts turn to Jack unexpectedly is like a physical blow. To live without him is intolerable, and she doesn't quite understand why. They were nothing to each other.

No. He was everything to her. He never knew it. Would have laughed, if he had. (No, he wouldn't have laughed. Jack was always kind. But he wouldn't have understood, she suspects. Wouldn't have....)

_What do we have, and what do we need?_ Jack's voice asks in her mind. _Priorities, Indiana._ And compromise. She can't kill all the _Goa'uld_. Maybe she can kill some of them. Maybe she can even find a safe way to get to Earth, eventually. So what she needs....

_What I need to find, Jack, is weapons._

_Look around._

She feels as if at last she's thinking more clearly than she has in weeks. She has a plan. She'll scout Stargate addresses, looking for what Jack used to call 'big honking space guns.' She'll arm herself. And then she'll kill _Goa'uld_. She can risk dialing Earth if she's well-armed enough. Or Abydos.

Suddenly things are even clearer.

The _Goa'uld_ may have reduced Earth to a radioactive cinder, but after that, as Teal'c said, they'll fight among themselves. And in their quarrels, they'll be consolidating their own domains and seizing what pieces of each others' they can. Ra is dead, and his domain -- all the worlds he controlled -- is up for grabs, and now they all know it. Someone will go to Abydos by ship, to enslave her friends and what's left of her family once more. They'll unseal the Stargate when they get there. The Abydans won't accept the rule of another 'god' so readily. For five thousand years they worshipped the _Goa'uld_ Ra, thinking he was a god, until she and Jack and Kawalsky and Feretti and Freeman and Porro and Brown and even Mankiewicz had freed them from their enslavement. The Abydans know the gods who come from the stars in golden pyramids are false. They'll say so, and die for speaking the truth.

She needs to find weapons and go to Abydos. It's harder than she hopes. The first planet has nothing but grass and trees. It takes her a couple of hours to be sure of that without a MALP to help her, but there's nothing anywhere within two hours' walk of the Gate. No sign of civilization at all.

It's still early. Afternoon. She goes on to the second planet on her list. It's early morning there. By her watch, she left the Land of Light in the early morning; she arrived at her destination at its midday and left in its late afternoon; its days must be longer than Earth's. Now it's morning again, though by her watch, the day is drawing to a close. In her mind she hears Janet warning her about messing around too much with the body's Circadian rhythms, and about the terrible consequences to body _and_ mind. She ignores the voice. There's nothing she can do to set herself right -- can't go back to Earth to reset her body's clock -- and Janet's dead anyhow.

There's a village on Number Two (she sees no reason to give them long designations in her mind, and there's no way to vocalize the Gate Symbols at all). The people are primitive, as on so many worlds they've visited. Abducted-and-resettled, as usual, from somewhere in the Mediterranean/Fertile Crescent area; Greek this time, she thinks. There are only a few Northern European transplants they've seen. No New World cultures at all. It can't be that they were too primitive to exploit, considering the level of civilization the _Goa'uld_ allow their victims to achieve. Maybe they're out here, and they just haven't run into them yet.

But such speculation belongs to her old life, not to her new. She gets the villagers to talk to her, asks the questions she's asked on a dozen worlds: _do you know the Goa'uld? How long has it been since they've been here?_

She's in the domain of the god Ares, apparently. He isn't here right now, but he'll be back in the time of the Red Moon. He takes his tribute in mined and refined _naquaadah_ , and every seventh year he takes seven youths and seven maidens as additional tribute. They never return.

The chief is happy to show her around, but there's nothing here she can use. The refinery is primitive and life-destroying, its heat and gasses shortening lives. The mines are worse. It is all for the greater glory of the god Ares, she is told.

She's invited to stay the night -- Ares cannot beat the custom of hospitality out of these descendants of those who once ruled the windy plains of Troy -- but Dani refuses. She doesn't know when the time of the Red Moon is. She doesn't know if Ares would know who she was. It's better to be safe. She leaves at noon -- it's well into evening by her watch -- and goes back to the planet where Jack died. It's dusk there. Light enough for her to make her way to his grave. There's no point, really. He isn't here. She doesn't believe in ghosts or spirits or even Heaven, however you define it. But this grave is a destination, a fixed compass point in a universe that has lost all meaning, and she needs that.

_Welcome home,_ the fiction of Jack says in her mind, and the voice she hears holds all Jack's tired bitterness. She's heard that tone in his voice before. When he thought he couldn't save Teal'c from the government. When Kawalsky died -- when they knew he was dead, really. He'd died long before.

_I'll try again tomorrow,_ she answers it, unrolling her bedroll and setting up her camp.

Necropolis.

City of the dead.

Only two inhabitants, but still.

#

P8X-987 -- she remembers belatedly -- had an SG-Team staying offworld. She wakes up after only a few hours and runs back to the Gate. She only remembered 987 at all because she was trying to remember Gate addresses before she went to sleep: recent missions, projected missions; she knew SG-1 wasn't the only team offworld that day, but even though she briefs -- briefed -- most of the Gate Teams, she didn't set their mission schedules. But SG-7's mission to P8X-987 was a long-term project because the SGC had wanted to do some astronomical observations there and had to build the observatory first. The natives call their planet Hanka. She doesn't stop to pack. Boots, vest, flashlight, go. The sky itself gives enough light to dial.

It's dark on P8X-987, and she flicks her flashlight on. She doesn't see the bodies at first. She smells them. It's a charnel reek; too many bodies left unburied for too long. The scent of apocalypse, carried across fields ripe with unfamiliar grain. _Alien corn,_ she tells herself, rummaging through her vest for a bandana to tie over her face.

She advances down the road, shining her flashlight cautiously ahead of her. Everyone she sees is dead, and as she stops to stare at the rotting and half-eaten (animal predation) bodies tumbled in ditches and across the road -- dead where they've fallen -- she realizes she won't find SG-7 alive. Plague, this looks like. Quick. Nasty. She hesitates. If SG-7 died in place, they left behind everything she needs to mount an attack to free Abydos. Certainly enough tools and weapons to get through the Gate safely and back to Nagada, if the Abydos Stargate is open at all. But every moment she stays on Hanka increases her own chances of exposure to whatever killed the Hankans. She cannot achieve _kel'mar_ if she's dead.

She runs back to the Stargate and hurries through. On the other side she sits on the steps, shaking, and scrubs every inch of her exposed skin with the anti-bacterial wipes she carries in her pockets. If it's not enough, she's dead.

She hadn't packed up her campsite when she took off. She hadn't built a campfire the previous evening. The bedroll is damp and the night is dark. By the light of her flashlight she unpacks her stove and boils water. The Mykene have given her some tea, and there's a little coffee left. She makes coffee, drinks it, thinks.

She isn't Jack, she isn't General Hammond. There were over a dozen SG teams by the end of the world, and at least a third of them were usually offworld, some of them for days, even weeks, at a time. But she doesn't know which ones, or where, or even _if_.

No one could have left Earth after SG-1 that day. But how many had left before and had been offworld when the Gate went down forever? She knows which teams she'd briefed -- and for where -- in the last two weeks as of the morning of her last mission. She just doesn't know whether they'd left and come back, were yet to go, or might still be out here. Somewhere.

SG-1, gone.

SG-7, dead on Hanka.

Anywhere between one and three other SG teams could be out here with her.

And it doesn't, in the end, _matter_ , because even if they're alive, out here, like her, they'll probably have moved on from their original mission worlds -- like her. And there's no central rendezvous point for the Teams out here beyond the Gate in case of a disaster like this. (There should be. But there isn't.) And -- maybe -- any and all of the others has already dialed back to Earth, gotten a lock on a _Goa'uld_ Stargate that may only exist in her paranoid fantasies, and walked through to death, torture, or slavery. Barring a miracle -- or another in a succession of very bad days -- she'll never know.

When it's light enough, she goes to gather firewood. She wants to go on. Now. But she's been exposed to plague. She won't risk carrying it with her.

Jack approves of her decision.

#

Twenty-four hours later she's sure she's clean. Whatever took out the Hankans killed in hours, even minutes. There weren't any bodies near the DHD, and even if Earth had been ... gone ... by then, they would have tried to dial out, and SG-7 would have left a message at the Gate. Or their bodies.

One bullet dodged. It's time to go. She carefully packs up all her things, heats one last MRE, and heads to her next destination.

The next two planets (Four and Five) are a wash. No people, no weapons, but it takes her most of the day to decide that, and even so, she knows she can't quite be sure. Not without technology she no longer has, and someone who could interpret the (nonexistent) MALP's readings. (Sammy.) But Sammy is dead. The blast that killed Jack originated from the SGC. From the Gate Room, where Sammy was working on the Dialing Computer.

She moves on.

On Planet Six, there are people; a village right at the base of the Gate. She meets a man called Hanno. Hanno asks her who she is, and why she's here. She tells him she's an explorer, travelling through the Stargate. Hanno tells her the _Goa'uld_ frequently come to his world to take slaves, but when they do, his people hide. She is welcome to hide with them if the _Goa'uld_ come while she is here.

She tells him she believes the _Goa'uld_ destroyed her homeworld while she was away.

Hanno is sorry, but he sounds neither shocked nor surprised. His village is a small one, and though he tells her there are other villages on this planet -- all clustered near the Stargate, of course -- the entire planetary population is undoubtedly less than that of Colorado Springs. But even if he could imagine the billions of lives that have been lost in the destruction of Earth, it wouldn't impress him. Such obliteration is a fact of life in a galaxy dominated by the _Goa'uld_.

She takes shelter with him and his people for the night. Hanno tells her about his father, killed by Jaffa in the service of a _Goa'uld_. He traces the Jaffa-mark for her in the dust of the floor. Apophis. She tells him her brother was taken as by Apophis, her sister is dead. In the morning she moves on.

Seven: a rare desert world. The Stargate platform is half buried in sand as fine as sugar and as white as snow. The sand stretches as far as the eye can see. The air shimmers in the heat; the temperature near the sand is at least 200 degrees; the sky is bleached to whiteness by a sun that seems blue-white -- not yellow -- in the sky. She looks around and steps quickly to the DHD to dial again. This place could kill her in an hour. Less.

Number Eight is P3X-989; one of the few Dialing Computer Algorhythms she remembers. It's promising -- a room full of machines. But she's barely started looking around when she's knocked unconscious, and when she comes to, she's being held prisoner, gagged and adhered -- somehow -- to a table in a large room somewhere. It smells of dust and oil, and there's a distant sound of machinery.

Her captor's name is Harlan; a fussy, funny, silly little man. She'd like him if he weren't holding her prisoner, and if he didn't hold her for almost three days, forgetting to feed her or give her anything to drink. It's bizarre, because he doesn't seem to mean to want to hurt her in any way. No matter his intentions, she's so weak by the time he does let her go that she can't really argue with him. He won't let her stay, and he won't let her take anything with her. He just hustles her out of there (fortunately, with all her gear) as quickly as he can, and back to the Stargate. It's already engaged when she gets to it, and he pushes her through. She's just lucky she ends up back on what she's taken to calling (in her mind) Jack's World. If he'd sent her back to the world she'd come from -- Number Seven -- she'd probably be dead.

She lies on the steps of the Stargate, doing her best not to gulp down the entire contents of her canteen at once, wondering what the hell just happened. It's almost an hour before she feels strong enough to move, and she has a blinding headache. As soon as she's able, she dials P3X-989 again, but she can't get a lock. Harlan's not home, she guesses. _Comtraya_ must be one of those words like _Aloha_ : 'Hello' and 'Goodbye.'

_Comtraya, Jack._

She stays for a few days on Jack's World getting her strength back. She realizes her captivity frightened her; a small shock on top of so many greater ones, really, but she thinks of that old proverb about the straw that broke the camel's back. She thinks she might be tempted to stay here too long, to stay forever, and forces herself to go on to the next planet on her list. She spends too long there as well, just wandering among the trees, though it's empty like so many of the others. She wonders if she's losing heart, losing momentum. Realizing she's simply going to fail at this task as she's failed at so much in her life. Because the _Goa'uld_ have done a good job of keeping the Galaxy beaten down around them. How could the SGC ever have thought Ra would have written down the address of a civilization possessing weapons that could challenge his power on the Abydos Cartouche? All that's there are the addresses of _Goa'uld_ strongholds and _Goa'uld_ slave worlds. And, by now -- after the passage of so many millennia -- _former_ slave worlds.

She forces herself to move on. Her next destination is the last of those she remembers SGC-designations for. The last of SG-1's projected missions.

P3R-233.

It's pitch-dark except for the light of the Stargate; another indoor tech-heavy place, like P3X-989, and this time, seeing that, she drops her quarterstaff and draws her gun immediately, flipping the safety off then fumbling for her flashlight, barely getting it out before the wormhole disengages. Then she sneezes violently, because the air is choked with dust. Her pistol goes off and she almost drops her flashlight. She drags her finger off the trigger, jittering with nerves, and slews her light around violently, but if anyone were here, they'd certainly show up at the sound of a shot, and they don't. The place seems to be deserted.

She steps forward cautiously, leaving her quarterstaff where it lays. The air is soft and dead, making her throat dry and her eyes itch, but she doesn't put away her gun. The floor beneath her feet is treacherous with soft dust, and, looking down, she sees no prints on the floor except those she has made herself. This place has been deserted for a very long time.

After a few more moments she presses the safety into place on her pistol, then holsters it. She goes back for her quarterstaff, and starts her search. She feels the echoes of the excitement she would have felt seeing this place in another lifetime. It's heartbreaking. This place is an alien museum. They must have brought back things from _everywhere_. Maybe ... weapons?

She wishes she didn't care.

She finds one room filled with the treasures of Ancient Earth and is about to leave -- they don't matter to her now -- when her attention is captured by something that doesn't fit. A small gleaming object, bright and high-tech. She leans her quarterstaff against the work-bench and picks it up.

It lights up. And something she hadn't noticed before -- over in the corner -- lights up, too. It looks like a mirror set into a chunk of rock. She balances her flashlight on the edge of the table, and, still holding the alien object, walks over to it. It _looks_ like a mirror. She can see the room behind her. She just can't see herself. There's something else off about the reflection, though, besides the fact she isn't in it. She reaches out and touches the surface of the mirror curiously -- then squeaks, faintly, in surprise, as she receives a faint zattish shock running up from her fingertips through her entire body. The whole room is suddenly brighter. She turns around in alarm.

_Jack was always telling you not to touch things and he was right--_

Then her mind stops working completely.

#

P3R-233. Another number, another day. He's tired of this. He ought to retire. He should have been court-martialed. He thinks so. General Hammond doesn't.

_There was nothing you could do, Jack._

General Hammond's wrong. They could have _not_ gone to P3X-866 in the first place. They could have _not_ believed Indiana was dead. They could have _not_ taken three days to figure out their heads were being messed with and get back there to rescue her.

He will never, as long as he lives, forget the moment the alien fish guy walked up out of the water carrying her body. Her _dead_ body. He'd wanted to kill the thing. Carter'd stopped him.

They took her body home. Fraiser has told O'Neill how she died, but all he remembers about the report is that she didn't drown. She's buried in Chicago, next to her parents. He's still here, going through the motions. He's lost people under his command before. He's lost a child. This is somehow an unholy combination of the two and something worse. He's lost someone he...

You aren't supposed to fall in love with someone under your command. He didn't realize he had. Until he was standing in her apartment with Teal'c and Carter, putting her life in boxes, and realized she was _never coming back._

And that was when he'd realized she was not only the most annoying person, male or female, he'd ever met in his life...

...but the one he wanted around for the rest of it.

And she won't be. Because something they're never going to be able to figure out happened on a planet on the other side of the Galaxy and she's dead. And the only thing that keeps him here -- it's not a good reason, he knows that -- is nobody else will look for Sha're and Skaara if he doesn't.

She'd wanted to find them both.

If he finds Skaara, if he finds Sha're, it won't bring Indiana back. But it will be a better memorial than the flag he keeps on his mantle.

The Stargate on P3R-233 is inside some kind of museum. It's dark, and smells of dust. O'Neill looks around warily. Teal'c says the _Goa'uld_ have been here, though not recently. O'Neill tells Carter and Rothman to make a sweep. Rothman stumbles after Carter, snuffling at the dust. O'Neill grits his teeth. He doesn't like Rothman, but he's dammed if he'll ask for a replacement. As it is, they've been through six A/T specialists in the last three months -- Rothman is Lucky Number Seven -- due to transfers out. It's not that O'Neill asks to have them reassigned. They just decide they want to be somewhere else. He's sure Rothman will, too. Sooner or later. At least no one else has died.

Suddenly Teal'c gets a look at a piece of voodoo and announces -- looking as spooked as Teal'c ever does -- they aren't safe here and have to leave at once. Something about _'Crush Me'_ , which sounds Russian to O'Neill, and probably isn't.

Indy would know.

And then Carter's shouting his name.

"Crush Me" or not, he and Teal'c are off in the direction of the sound as fast as they can go, weapons at the ready. It's easy enough to find. The only place in this whole damned sideshow where the lights are on.

They charge in and skid to a halt.

Carter and Rothman are there.

And so is Indiana.

She stares at him and her face goes white. She sinks to her knees, still staring at him as if he's all her bedtime monsters.

"We buried you," she says.

#

"We walked in here to check it out and she..." Carter swallows hard. "She was standing here. Sir."

"Teal'c?" O'Neill says, and his voice is harsh, because it doesn't matter how much you want something, there are things you know you can't have. His MP5 is already pointed at ... her ... and he flicks the other hand, and Carter falls back behind him, pulling Rothman with her.

"I am uncertain, O'Neill," Teal'c says.

"Jack?" she says. "Sammy?" Her voice has that flat pushed-to-the-edge quiver he's heard from her before. It's her; in his bones he knows it's her; and for one sick instant he has the urge to empty the whole clip from the MP5 into her _right now_ , because dead things should _stay dead_ , not come walking up to you on alien planets three months after you've laid a wreath on their grave.

They don't know it's her.

"What are you?" he asks instead, because that's his job.

Her eyes widen at that, then narrow. "Teal'c?" she says. "You found them? You came back?"

"They have not been absent," Teal'c says.

"Don't talk to it," O'Neill says. "I say again: _what are you_?"

"I'm me," the thing pretending to be Indiana answers, looking as if it's starting to get angry. It starts to get up.

"Don't," he says, jerking his gunbarrel at ... it.

The thing settles back. Takes a deep breath. "But I don't know who the hell you are, Jacky Boy."

He sets his jaw. "Carter, go dial up the Gate. Tell General Hammond we've run into a problem and we need a really quick answer."

Because P3R-233 isn't safe for human life.

#

Jack is alive. He can't be. Jack doesn't think she's her. Teal'c doesn't recognize her. Not the way he should. Robert -- _Robert?_ \-- is on SG-1. Sammy looks like she wants to cry.

What's going on?

They take her back through the Stargate at gunpoint, disarmed, with her hands secured behind her back as if she were a prisoner, and by then she knows there's something stranger going on than all of that (than the fact that Jack, that all of them, are somehow alive again), because she walks down the ramp in the Gate Room and it's there, everything's there, untouched. She tries to explain why this is all wrong, but Jack won't listen. None of them will listen to her.

General Hammond calls her 'that.' _"What in the name of God is that, Colonel O'Neill?"_

_"We don't know yet, General. We found it on P3R-233. It thinks it's her."_

Armed SFs take her up to the Infirmary. Janet's eyes grow wide when she sees her. The captain of the security team makes his report: prisoner found by SG-1 on P3R-233, here for medical examination.

"Janet?" she says in a small voice.

"Dr. Jackson is dead," Janet says. Janet tries very hard to keep her voice even, but it shakes. Just a little.

Jack arrives while Janet is checking her over. They're both surprised she's human. Apparently, for some reason, he and Janet expect her to be a robot and she has no idea why. She keeps trying to explain this isn't happening, none of this can be happening, because he's dead. She and Teal'c buried him on some planet whose address she can't remember. The SGC is gone. Apophis has destroyed the Earth because Amaunet told him to. Apparently she gets pretty loud, because that's the last thing she remembers.

#

When she wakes up, she's strapped to a bed in Isolation Medical. She can tell this even without her glasses -- which are gone -- because the walls are black. It's some kind of shielding material, Sammy told her once. Her mouth is dry from sedation. She shifts restlessly, but there's no play in the restraints. She's strapped down as thoroughly as Kawalsky ever was; at least she's on her back. Do they think she's a _Goa'uld_? They have to know she isn't by now. They've had time to do an MRI.

There's someone in the room with her. Not any of the medical staff; it's a green blur instead of a white one. The figure approaches when she starts to struggle. It's Jack. "Welcome back," he says. His voice is neutral. She closes her eyes in frustration. "So," he says. "That planet? Where I'm ... buried?"

He sounds a little less hostile than he did back on the planet. Just a little. "I don't remember the number we gave it. I could write down the address, but I'm a little tied up at the moment." Her voice is hoarse. He holds a cup so she can drink through the straw.

"And this, ah, Amaunet?"

It's an interrogation. She wonders if these are her friends or her enemies. If any of this is real. If she's gone mad. If she's dead. If they're -- somehow -- _Goa'uld_. Even if they are, does it matter if she talks? The _Goa'uld_ already know everything about the Stargate and its addresses -- and themselves -- that she does. She doesn't really think they're _Goa'uld_. Why would the _Goa'uld_ bother with all of this just for her? They aren't, from all she's seen, that big on subtlety.

"Amaunet is Apophis's Queen. When he came to the Mountain the first time, he took some airwoman hostage; that's her host. I don't know why I'm telling you this. Either you're Jack O'Neill and you know it already, or you're a figment of my imagination and I'm talking to myself."

"Pretend I'm real," Jack says dryly. It sounds like Jack. It can't be Jack. She sighs, and closes her eyes again. Maybe the last few weeks were just a really bad dream. Maybe _she_ was on the steps that day, not him. Maybe she was badly hurt and has been in a coma. Maybe this is her first true awakening. Like that movie he likes. _I want to wake up now, Auntie Em._ She finds her voice and goes on.

"So Amaunet took someone from Earth as her host. We know, from when that _Goa'uld_ got into Major Kawalsky, the host's memories are available to the _Goa'uld_ , so, based on whatever they got out of the woman's mind -- and what we were doing through the Gate -- Apophis and Amaunet decided Earth was a big enough threat that he could get the System Lords together to destroy us."

"You're still here."

"You said... Janet said I was dead. Jack? Please?" She stares at him -- blurry, even this close -- hoping to see some acknowledgement of her reality. She sees nothing.

"You're human. Your DNA matches what we have on-file. I don't know... Go on."

He thinks she's dead too. But -- before -- he thought she was something else -- a robot? -- and now he doesn't. Now he isn't sure about her at all. She doesn't know why -- since he can't be Jack -- it matters so much to her that he trust her, but it does. She closes her eyes again.

"The three of us were offworld. Sammy stayed home that day to work on the Gate. There was a problem. Not enough to keep us home. The wormhole was still open when the SGC was hit -- that's my best guess -- and a blast of energy came through. You were standing right in front of it."

"And yet, here I am."

She doesn't answer that. She keeps her eyes closed. "Teal'c and I were farther away. We tried dialing back to Earth, but we couldn't get a lock. We kept trying for weeks, but the Earth Stargate never responded. Then Teal'c went..." She stops.

_Interrogation._ If these aren't her friends -- and this _can'_ t be Jack -- if she tells him where Teal'c went, and who helped him...

"I can't tell you," she says miserably. "I can't, Jack. I can't."

"You said -- back there -- that Teal'c found us. Did he leave you?" Jack's voice is quiet. It sounds like Jack.

"He figured out what Apophis had done. He went off to fight the _Goa'uld_ his own way." She opens her eyes. "That isn't Teal'c. He'd know me if he was."

"All right," Jack says neutrally. "What did _you_ do?"

Telling him can hurt no one but her. "All I could think of to do was to keep trying Stargate addresses. Maybe I'd find allies. Weapons. Something. Even a way back to Earth. They have to have left something behind, didn't they? Or opened another Stargate here? The place where I found you ... it looked promising. There was this mirror. Only it didn't seem to reflect anything. I touched it, and then I turned around and Sammy and Robert came in. And when the hell did Robert join SG-1 anyway, if you don't mind my asking?" It's been a long speech, and her mouth is dry. She hadn't meant to do that much talking. She realizes she's staring at him again. She hadn't meant to do that either.

"About three months after you died," Jack says. He gets up and walks away and she's alone again. Janet comes in a few minutes later. She's all business and won't meet Dani's eyes. Dani doesn't push things.

Robert joined SG-1 after she _died_?

When Janet saw her, Janet said she was dead, too. She's come back from real death twice, and false death -- at the hands of Nem -- once. But this death, real or false, must have been far more final. They don't believe she's real. She doesn't believe they're real either.

They can't be.

#

A few hours later she's moved from Isolation Medical to a holding cell. At least the restraints come off, though she's in cuffs until she gets to the cell. She's starting to get pretty irritated by the treatment she's receiving, and demands to see Jack, Sammy, General Hammond. She gets no response to her demands, though they feed her. Regular meals. Not enough coffee. She has plenty of time to think.

Jack -- _can't be Jack must be Jack_ \-- said Robert had joined SG-1 three months after she'd died. Three months ago they were on Argos. Jack was infected with alien nanites. _He'd_ been dying. _She_ hadn't. But he'd gotten better. They'd found a cure. And they'd all been fine, and alive, and together for almost two months after that.

"Your stupid story makes no sense!" she shouts at the walls. "You aren't who you say you are! I don't believe you!"

Nobody pays any attention. And nobody lets her out. Armed guards bring her meals. They won't speak to her.

Time passes.

Somewhere between breakfast and lunch on the third day, she's taken to an Interrogation Room. The upper walls are mirrored glass, and she knows there are probably people watching.

Jack walks in. He looks harassed. "You want to go over it again?" he says.

"Bite me," she answers sullenly, sitting back in her chair.

"Carter's got a theory," he says.

"Sammy's always got a theory," she snaps. "And it better be a damned good one, because she's not Sammy and you're not Jack. Your story sucks, by the way. Three months ago we were all alive on Argos. You were about ninety, though."

His mouth quirks in a humorless smile and his eyes are as unreadable as they were on Abydos. The first time, when Charlie was barely cold in his grave. "Fraiser did an autopsy on you after we got your body back. P3X-866. Remember it?"

"Oh, give me a hint," she snarls. She's tired of cooperating, tired of playing nice. She wants them to take off their masks and show her who they really are.

"Water planet."

She goes suddenly cold inside. "We named the planet Oannes," she says slowly. "An alien called Nem -- blue skin, gills -- kidnapped me and held me for three days. He convinced you I was dead, but I wasn't. He just wanted information about his mate, Omoroca. You broke his conditioning and came back for me. I'd been awake the whole time, trying to figure out what he wanted. After I'd gotten some sleep, we all went out for sushi at that place down on... that place..." She falters to a stop, because Jack is staring at her, and she thinks he's seeing _her_ for the first time. There's always that moment with Jack, when he starts to let you in. Not an easy man to know. You have to earn admission to O'Neillworld. She knows she's not there yet. But she's no longer -- quite -- the enemy.

"We came back and got your _body_."

She feels the world slowly revolve sickeningly around her and takes a deep breath. "That's not possible. I'm not dead."

"Neither am I."

She drops her head into her hands. "I saw you die." Touched charcoal shimmering with heat. Placed sun-warmed stones over turned earth. This world she inhabits now cannot be real.

"This mirror thing," Jack says, dragging her back to the present. "Carter says it's like a Stargate. Only it takes you sideways."

She looks up from her hands. "'Sideways?'"

"Sideways." Jack waves his hands in an explanatory fashion, though it doesn't explain much. "Like _Star Trek_."

She looks hopefully up at the mirrored observation booths. "Sammy?" Sammy will help.

Sammy's explanation doesn't make a lot more sense to Dani, but at least it doesn't involve ancient television shows. It offers a glimmer of hope. Not madness. Not death. _Science._

They brought the artifact she touched and its controller back from P3R-233. Based on the experiments Sammy's done on it while Dani's been locked up, Sammy's calling it a Quantum Mirror. She thinks it allows travel between Alternate Realities. The theory behind Alternate Realities is basically that every time anyone anywhere in the universe makes a decision, a new universe comes into existence, and all these universes exist side-by-side. By touching the mirror, Dani has stepped from one reality into another. Here, she died three months ago on Oannes. But here, Apophis has not rallied the System Lords to invade Earth. Jack, Sammy, Teal'c-here, all her friends, everyone she knows, are still alive. Earth is still safe.

Why? The airwoman -- Sergeant Hayward -- was still kidnapped by Apophis on his first raid of Cheyenne Mountain. They tell her that, because Sammy wants to know how and why their two realities are so disastrously different. Dani's survival can't have caused the invasion and destruction of Earth. No one thinks that. But Sha're is Apophis's Queen here. They explain this to her carefully. Sgt. Hayward is listed as MIA, and Sha're is Apophis's Queen. The knowledge stuns her. Her sister, her brother, both _Goa'uld_ hosts.

"I killed her on Abydos," she says insistently. They're all sitting around the table in the Interrogation Room now. Sammy, Jack, Teal'c. The three of them on one side, her on the other. She still doesn't -- quite -- believe them. Believe _in_ them, to be exact.

"No," Jack says. "You didn't. Pops' Serpent Guards hit the Gate Room and took her and Skaara to Chulak. They were both..." he stops.

"They were both chosen as hosts," Teal'c says.

She doesn't look at this Teal'c. In her world, Teal'c led the Serpent Guards who raided Chulak. Sha're died in his arms. Dani has forgiven him long since.

She shakes her head. "I was on Abydos; I'd stayed behind after the first Abydos Mission. An SG Team came through: you. I took you to see the Cartouche Room. There was a garbled transmission while we were there. We ran back to the Gate Room. There were Serpent Guards there, and one of them had Sha're. I picked up an M-60 and killed her. Skaara was taken to Chulak. Not Sha're."

"You _killed_ her?" Sammy says, stunned. Dani flinches, just a little. She hadn't known Sammy well then. And afterward, knowing the _Goa'uld_ , Sammy had understood.

"Carter," Jack says. He looks back at her. "We got to the Gate Room after they'd left."

"So Amaunet chose Sha're here," she says slowly, reasoning it out. "Sha're is alive here." Alive and in hell. Her sister is alive and in hell. "So Amaunet doesn't have Sergeant Hayward's knowledge about us." Which means everything should be just fine, except for the fact Sammy doesn't look as if it is. Sammy looks worried. It isn't actually Sammy, but she's close enough to Dani's friend that Dani can tell this version of Sammy knows something she doesn't like.

"Captain?" Jack says. "Let's all take a walk."

They go to Sammy's lab, walking Dani through the familiar corridors of the SGC. The Quantum Mirror is there, shut down and empty, sealed behind a Plexiglass shield.

"We had to put that up," Sammy says. "People kept getting sucked into alternate universes. It happens any time you touch the surface while it's activated. But there's always a mirror on the other side, so you just have to touch it again to get back. We don't want any more accidents, though."

"How do I...?" Dani swallows hard, reaches out and touches the Plexiglass shield. She can see Jack and Teal'c, standing behind her, reflected in it. "How do I get back to my Earth?"

"You can't," Sammy says promptly. "You can only go between mirrors, and your mirror -- the one in your universe -- is still on P3R-233. So that's where you'd go. If we could find it."

She looks at Sammy with quick suspicion.

"Uh, Dani--" Sammy says, stumbling a bit over her name -- because, Dani knows, this Sammy has stood at her graveside and thought of her as dead for months; and so she is, the 'her' that belongs here. "There are, well, a lot of universes. And I'm just starting to study this controller."

Sammy switches the controller on. The center of the mirror shimmers and fills, but it doesn't reflect Sammy's lab. It's showing the SGC Control Room, for some reason, but the computers are dark and show the marks of weapons fire.

_\--flip--_

The lab on P3R-233. It looks the way Dani remembers it, but the quarterstaff and flashlight Dani remembers leaving aren't there.

_\--flip--_

The lab on 233 again. Different artifacts on the table.

_\--flip--_

A storage room filled with crates. "Looks like Area 51," Sammy comments.

"Why would you want to go back to Earth if the snakes have already slagged the place?" Jack asks suddenly.

"Because--" she says, and stops. _Because Abydos is next. Unless it's already too late._ "He's still going to come here," she tells Sammy instead.

"I know," Sammy says grimly, shutting down the Mirror again. "All of these variations we've just seen are very near our own reality, and when you start going at all further out, most of the SGCs we're able to see through the Quantum Mirror have already been invaded by the _Goa'uld_. We have to figure out where the attack on Earth is coming from in time to stop it."

Dani hesitates. It's time to make up her mind. Either everything they've told her is true -- Alternate Realities, Quantum Mirrors, and they _are_ parallel versions of her friends -- or not. She can tell them what she knows, and it might save them from the attack that's coming. Or they're _Goa'uld_ \-- or something she hasn't even thought of -- and giving them this information means that hundreds of people will die on Chulak.

_Alia iacta est._

"Shau'nac," Dani says, turning around. "I think she may know -- here -- where... She'll tell Teal'c."

Both Jack and Sammy turn to look at Teal'c. He's looking as stunned as Teal'c ever gets. "Tell me how you know of Shau'nac, Danielle Jackson," he says.

"When we couldn't get the Gate to respond, we, my Teal'c and I, we went to the Land of Light. Because of Drey'auc and Rya'c. You ... remember? We kept trying, but the Earth Stargate never responded. Then ... my ... Teal'c went to Chulak. The only way we could get back to Earth was to steal a spaceship, and I guess he thought he could find one there. He talked to a Temple Priestess he knew there. Her name is Shau'nac. She's how we found out what Apophis had done. Before that... we weren't really sure what had happened." She pushes up her glasses and rubs her eyes. "He... went a little crazy. He said all the _Goa'uld_ would be fighting each other after they destroyed Earth. He said that even though he was _shol'va_ to Apophis, he had a chance to be accepted by another _Goa'uld_ Lord if he moved quickly enough. He said now that the _Tau'ri_ were gone, to fight from within was the Jaffa's only hope of eventual freedom. After that, I... I remembered our mission roster and followed that."

"And you and we were on P3R-233 at the same time. And you touched the Quantum Mirror and came through to our reality while we were there," Sammy says. "Lucky for you."

She stares at Sammy blankly. Lucky.

"Will it work, T?" Jack asks.

"Perhaps," Teal'c says.

The three of them move on to discuss the potential mission to Chulak. Nobody's eyes glow, the walls don't slide back to reveal a _Goa'uld_ dungeon, and she realizes she's made the right choice. She turns back to the Quantum Mirror, staring into it.

She wonders if they'll let her visit her own grave.

#

He can hear the music she's listening to even through the earphones she's wearing. He has no idea where she got it. It's nothing she -- the other her -- ever listened to before. It's cranked up so loud he can hear it the moment he opens the door to her temporary quarters. The baseline reverberates like the distant echo of carpet bombing, and for a moment the decades slip, and he's standing in a hatchway, not a doorway, and the air is thick and wet and smells of hashish and cinnamon and human waste.

Jump One and Jump Two had killed to the sound of hard rock; eighties heavy metal; Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Metallica; stuff he'd stopped listening to after Charlie was born.

His men had nicknamed him 'Voodoo'. Not because he'd come back from the dead. That had been later, with Cromwell. He'd gotten the nickname because he was a dead man walking; someone who should have died on a dozen missions and hadn't. Someone who was dead inside. That had changed after Charlie was born, too. And even Charlie's death hadn't been able to bring 'Voodoo' back from the dead. He'd meant to die, after Charlie, but even on Abydos, he hadn't wanted to take anyone else with him.

She looks up, and her eyes are flat and empty, and Indiana's eyes never looked that way ... before she died. No. She hasn't come back from the dead. She's still dead. But she's here. What irritates him most is that he can't decide if this is the same woman they buried -- or not.

She shuts off the CD player and drops the headphones on the bed beside her, still regarding him with that blank sleepwalker's gaze. The eyes of someone who doesn't care who she takes with her when she dies. She doesn't ... belong ... to him, it's true. Not their SG-1; not their Indiana Jackson. But he knows that look too well, the look of someone lost in a dark place, and the instincts created in him by years of command are to fix things like that before the damage becomes permanent.

Before it spreads.

"I was about to head out for the night. Thought I'd stop in and see if you need anything," he says. It's true he'd come to look in on her; probing a sore tooth. Now he realizes it was more than that. Until she saw the mirror in Carter's office she'd been pretty much normal--

_for a dead woman risen from the grave_

\--and afterward she'd withdrawn. Gone quiet. Not like the woman he remembers. The woman whose ghost he's been taking to bed with him for the last three months. He wants to know why.

"Has General Hammond approved the mission?" she asks.

"Yeah. T's going to be going through tomorrow morning. He figures he's got the best shot at this going alone, and General Hammond agrees, so..."

And that really sucks, and he spent the better part of the afternoon arguing against it, but it's not like they have an all-Jaffa SG Team to send through the Gate to back Teal'c up, either, and a bunch of _Tau'ri_ are not going to exactly be inconspicuous on Chulak, especially if things are going down over there the way Carter and Indy think they are.

Not Indy.

"It doesn't matter, though, does it?" she says softly.

"What?"

"Whether he succeeds or not. Whether Shau'nac has the information you need or not. Whether Apophis invades or not. If he doesn't do it here, he'll do it somewhere else. He _has_ done it somewhere else. Why does this reality matter more than any other?" Her voice is even, and reasonable, and far too quiet.

"I'm kinda attached to this reality."

She raises a hand and lets it drop. She doesn't need to speak. He knows what she'd say. _I was kind of attached to my reality too, Jack._ For a moment he imagines Earth gone, and everyone dead. Imagines the world she's been living in. Indy never was a soldier, and all Stargate Command's best efforts hadn't been able to turn her into one. But she said -- _this_ Danielle Jackson had said when they found her -- she was looking for weapons.

So she could kill.

Going down with her victims.

He makes a decision. "You're coming home with me. This place is really depressing at night." For the first time since he opened the door he sees something alive in her eyes: panic.

"No."

"Walk or be carried, Dr. Jackson."

She gets to her feet. He can tell she's trying to come up with a good argument, a way to refuse, and just can't think of one.

"Let's go," he says. "Now. Come on."

He has to lead her out of quarters by the arm, but she comes without further protest. She's silent all the way through the checkpoints, up to the surface, and down to the truck. She died a few weeks after her birthday, at the end of July. It's the beginning of October now. Dark and chilly, and she shivers. He pulls a spare jacket from behind the seat and hands it to her. She shrugs into it silently and climbs in. He starts the truck and drives off. This reminds him too much of the last time -- the first time -- he drove off the Mountain with her in the truck beside him shocked and shivering. Just back from Abydos. Sha're and Skaara prisoners of the _Goa'uld_.

Less than a year ago.

When they get to the house, she sits there in the cab until he comes around to the passenger side and opens the door.

#

"Everything's the same."

She's standing in the middle of his living room, still wrapped in his jacket, staring. He's not sure what to say to that. The idea of there being a billion _Star Trek_ realities out there just makes his head hurt, though Carter is pleased as punch about it. And knowing about them is going to give them the edge against the _Goa'uld_ , apparently. That's good.

"As you remember?" he asks.

"Yes. Just one change."

Two, if you count her being dead. He goes into the kitchen to get them both a beer. He brings them back and hands one to her and she tilts the bottle back, slugging the whole thing down without stopping for breath, and the gesture is so achingly familiar -- Indy in a mood -- he has to look away.

"Got another?" she asks, and he hands her his. He hasn't touched it yet.

"You might want to take your jacket off," he suggests, and she takes his jacket off and hers too, tossing them both on the couch, before starting on the second beer. He goes into the kitchen for two more. She'll slow down on the third one, then have a fourth and want to switch to Scotch. That's what she does -- what she did -- if it was a bad night and she needed to tie one on.

And there can't be many worse nights than this.

She slams back the second beer standing, and by then she's flushed and bright-eyed. She sits down on the couch and reaches for the third. As he expected, she just holds it. "What do you care?" she finally says. She's articulating carefully. Not because she's drunk, though two beers in less than ten minutes have to have hit her system hard. More as if she's attempting to wrestle concepts into English from some very foreign language.

"Come again?" he says.

"Dead," she says. "She's dead. I'm not her. Your Dr. Jackson is dead. Janet cut her up and then you buried her." Alcohol and pain have given her a brutal directness. If it were anyone else saying these words to him he'd be furious, but it's hard to think of Indy as dead when she's here. It's hard to remember this isn't her.

"You needed somewhere to be," he says, because that's part of the truth.

She sips the beer, just a little heavy-lidded now. "Dead," she says, and it isn't his Dr. Jackson she's talking about now, it's him. Or her Jack O'Neill. And there's something in her voice he's not sure he ought to hear. He'd loved Indiana, but he'd never had any idea what her feelings were about him -- or, to be truthful, he hadn't wanted to know. It was a bad idea to know, a worse idea to care. It could certainly never have gone anywhere, not with them both on SG-1, and there was no point in thinking about an afterward. He wonders how much they're alike, his dead teammate and her twin. Carter said some of the universes are so much alike you could step through the mirror and never know you had.

Except for the whole 'Earth was destroyed by the _Goa'uld_ ' thing.

"I had a marker stone carved. It's in the temple in the Land of Light. But I never knew, you'd, he'd, I didn’t know what birthdate to put on it."

He'd never told Indiana when his birthday was. He remembers her teasing him about it, wanting to know, at least the day. He wouldn't tell her. "October 20th, 1952," he says quietly.

"Oh," she says, and now there's nothing in her voice but surprise. She pushes up her glasses and scrubs at her eyes left-handed. She -- the other one; his -- hates -- hated -- to cry. He knows that. But he thinks the woman on his couch should. Anything is better than what he saw back in that room; the slow descent into a permanent numbness where nothing matters. "Nice funeral, then?" he asks.

"Was mine?" she counters.

He knows that angry flicker in her eyes -- like summer lightning -- and can't resist it. Easy to push her where she needs to go; she and Indy are that much alike.

"Everyone came," he says. "Catherine. Your grandfather was there." As soon as the words are out he realizes what he's said. Too late to take it back.

_"Nick?"_ Her voice spirals up into outraged disbelief. "You told Nick I was dead? You tracked him down?"

_"He had a right to see you buried."_

She recoils as if she's been slapped. He knows now -- having met Nick -- Indy wouldn't have wanted anyone to know about him. They'd found him in an insane asylum in Oregon, a voluntary self-committal. His doctors thought it would be good therapy for him to attend his granddaughter's funeral. At service, at the graveside, Nick spoke to her constantly, as if she were there -- alive -- beside him.

Her eyes turn very blue when she's angry, and he knows she's back with him now, out of the dangerous quiet place. But she's looking at him, into him, and he thinks maybe she's seeing too much. "Jack, what happened on Oannes wasn't your fault."

Her voice is so quiet it takes a heartbeat for the sense of the words to penetrate. She's turned the tables on him as easily as ever.

"Dammit, you--" _You died there._ No. _She_. He gets to his feet.

"Jack. Please. Listen. I know what happened there. She has to have made the same choices I did. There was a risk, Nem told me there was. We both made the same choice." She isn't angry now. There's a pleading expression on her face. He's seen it before. All she wants is for him to _understand_ , and he doesn't know -- he never knew -- how he can feel so angry and still think something's funny. Indiana always did that to him, and he wants to keep the distinction between Indiana and Dr. Danielle Jackson clear in his mind, but it's getting harder.

She sets down the bottle, gets to her feet, and walks toward him. "Nem wanted to know what had happened to Omoroca in Babylon five thousand years ago. He thought I knew -- and I _did_ know -- but the memories were buried in my subconscious mind. I forced him to use a device on me that would bring those memories to the surface. He told me it could kill me. I didn't think I had a choice; if he didn't get what he wanted, he was going to hold me prisoner there until I remembered by myself, and I knew I never would."

He doesn't want to hear this. It's what he's wanted to know, what any commander would want to know: what went wrong? Hearing it is like hearing the dead speak. "We were coming back for you!" he says, and it's Indy he's telling. _Wait for me, Indy. I'm coming back for you. I won't leave you behind._

"Oh Jack, even if I knew you'd get your memories back, how could I know Nem wouldn't just take them away again -- or kill you -- the next time? Or that you'd ever find me? His lab, fortress, whatever, was at least thirty feet under the surface. I had to do it."

"You should have waited!" They're standing face to face now.

"I waited _three days!_ And I couldn't face the idea of living the rest of my life without you or seeing you dead because of me!" She stares at him in horror. "Him," she says quietly.

"Oh god," he says. Indiana died trying to get back to them. Died _because_ she was trying to get back to them. Took an insane risk -- her specialty -- because--

_'I couldn't face the idea of living the rest of my life without you.'_

"You didn't kill her," she says, and her voice is thick with tears.

"It's not your fault he's dead," he says, gathering her in.

She doesn't cry at first. She shakes as if she's caught in the grip of fever or chills, and only once that subsides do the tears come. They're quiet, and over quickly, but she stays where she is, in his arms, exhausted by the emotional storm. He holds her, wishing he believed in ghosts, instead of only being haunted by them.

Now they know.

He tries to tell himself it isn't an answer, isn't truth. Carter said every reality is possible. Maybe she's from one that's really different. He just can't bring himself to believe it. And so, no matter what he tries to tell himself, he knows now Indiana loved him too. Gambled with her life on Oannes -- knowing the risks -- to get home, to protect the team, _for him_. Did what any of them would have done, but for personal reasons. With Indiana it was always personal. And she lost the bet she made with the Reaper. That's never going to be all right.

But it hurts a little less, knowing why and how.

She sniffles, and he pats her back gently. She steps away -- her glasses are thoroughly fogged -- and he hands her the box of Kleenex from the end table. She pushes her glasses up to the top of her head and scrubs at her face and eyes thoroughly and inelegantly, then goes to sit back down on the couch. A little unsteady, but it's more from exhaustion than drink.

He goes to find the bottle of Scotch. When he comes back -- bottle, two glasses -- she's busy stuffing the used Kleenex tidily into her jacket pocket. Her glasses are on the table. She looks like an albino raccoon. Red eyes, red nose.

He owes her a message from her own dead as well. He's not quite sure what to say, but he knows she's entitled to it, for whatever comfort it will give her. He sets the glass down on the table in front of her. She nods, and he pours. "I'd go back and sit by the grave," she says. "It was the only place left that felt like home."

He thinks of the cemetery in Chicago and stops trying to find the right words. "He loved you," O'Neill says. "He couldn't tell you."

_"Would he?"_ she asks. Her voice is a strained whisper, her voice hoarse from crying, and he knows everything she doesn't ask.

"Someday," O'Neill says. Because maybe there would have been a 'someday' in which it would have been possible, for her in her world and for him in his. For not just the words, but for everything else. She nods, and blinks, and sips her Scotch in silence. And after another Scotch -- just one more -- she walks off down the hall to his guest room and closes the door.

#

In the morning, Jack drives them back to the Mountain. He signs her back in and nobody says anything. He takes her down to the Commissary with him for breakfast and she sits with him and Sammy and Robert; Teal'c has already left for Chulak. Except for the fact Robert is there in a team uniform and hers has no insignia, she could fall into the fantasy the last several weeks never happened.

The three of them talk about recent missions, SGC gossip. Much of it is familiar, but it's been three months since Oannes here; only about half that for her. Sammy has a theory about that, but it involves post-Einsteinian physics and the speed of light being a universal constant: Dani doesn't understand it at all. Then Sammy mentions Senator Kinsey is going to be here in a few hours for some kind of hearing.

"Doesn't General Hammond usually go to Washington?" Dani asks, puzzled.

"Not this time, I guess," Sammy says, equally puzzled.

Jack shrugs, but Dani can tell he's tense. "General Hammond mentioned it yesterday. Something about the budget. Don't worry about it, Carter."

After breakfast, he walks her back to her quarters and tells her to be good. Not much else she can be, with the limited resources available to her there. For the first time she's starting to wonder about the rest of her life. Can Sammy get her back to her own universe at all? Should she go if Sammy can? Earth is almost certainly gone. What about Abydos? The Abydans would fight. Would any of them have survived? Are any of them still alive by now, or is it already too late? How can she know? Sha're is alive here. She has a second chance to save her sister's life. She is not sure how to reconcile what she can do and what she should do. At the moment everything and nothing is possible. While she tries not to think about it -- her reality is that she is powerless to do anything at all, though she has the illusion of choice -- an airman comes and tells her she is summoned to the Briefing Room.

#

"So despite your mission report, Dr. Jackson isn't actually dead."

She regards the man at the foot of the table. Silver-haired, dissatisfied, flanked by aides and Major Samuels. He must be the Senator Jack was mentioning at breakfast. He has the look of a querulous toad.

"Care to tell me how many other times you've lied in your reports to the Pentagon, Colonel O'Neill?"

"Oh for crying out loud, Kinsey -- that isn't our Dani Jackson!"

"Really?" Senator Kinsey says archly.

She glances at General Hammond. He nods -- permission to speak -- and motions for her to sit down. "It's true, Senator," she says. "I'm from an alternate universe. Dr. Jackson died on P3X-866, the planet also referred to in your reports as Oannes."

"And how -- if I may ask -- did you get here, in that case?"

Sammy explains about the Quantum Mirror, but Senator Kinsey simply refuses to believe her. It's worse than that, though. He intends to shut down the Stargate Program -- take away their funding -- right now. Apparently he has the power to do it. That's why he's here.

"But-- But you can't do that! Not now! Jack -- General Hammond -- you've got to tell him! Senator, Apophis is coming to destroy the Earth -- he's coming with ships, with a fleet, right now. In my universe, he's already done it -- Earth is gone, the SGC is gone, everyone's dead -- that's why I'm here--"

"And I suppose you saw this with your own eyes, Dr. Jackson?" Senator Kinsey asks, smirking.

"I was offworld, _Senator_. That's why I'm alive."

Senator Kinsey gets to his feet. "Well this has all been very interesting. And frankly, my dear, once this program has ceased operation, I think you should get professional help. But I've heard nothing here today -- not your ridiculous fantasies, not Colonel O'Neill's warmongering imperialism, not Captain Carter's ludicrous notions of Science for the sake of Science -- that have convinced me to keep Pandora's Box open one minute longer. The Stargate Project is a clear and present danger to these United States, and I, for one, will not rest until the Stargate is buried forever."

"Save the speeches, Kinsey," Jack growls.

"Colonel O'Neill," General Hammond says warningly.

"Senator, I beg you," she says. "The _Goa'uld_ have _spaceships_. If we bury the Stargate, we won't stop them from coming. We'll only destroy our only means to fight them. You have to listen to me!"

Kinsey smiles. "If they want to come, let them. I do not believe the Divine Providence which has shaped this great nation of ours will allow what you are telling me to come to pass. If your _Goa'uld_ challenge us, we shall prevail."

She stares after him as he walks away. He's insane. She knows he is.

General Hammond says because of Senator Kinsey's recommendation, the SGC will have to cease operation as soon as the teams that are offworld return.

"You're all going to die," she says simply. She wraps her arms around herself. She can't have come to a second Earth simply to see it destroyed as well. She _can't_.

"We'll see about that," Jack says grimly. "General, doesn't what Dani has to say cut any ice in Washington?"

General Hammond shakes his head wearily. "I'll go make some calls."

She turns to Sammy after the General has left. "Send me back," she says.

Sammy just looks at her. "I can't," she says.

#

Teal'c is one of the last people back through the Gate before it's shut down 36 hours later. He comes back with information from Shau'nac that makes Dani want to scream: here, as well as there, Apophis is preparing to invade Earth. Teal'c is debriefed, though it's just a formality now, since the SGC is shutting down. The worst of it is he's trapped here now. He should have stayed away. She sits in, since the comparisons she can offer between her world and this are -- apparently, even though Kinsey has decided to kill them all -- still vital. Here they aren't facing the combined forces of the System Lords. Shau'nac is certain. It is only Apophis and his son, Prince Klorel -- _Skaara_ \-- who will come. Shau'nac believes Apophis is keeping his plans a secret from the other System Lords. It will probably be only two _ha'tak._

"So what are we facing, T?" Jack asks.

"One _ha'tak_ is sufficient to destroy a world from space," Teal'c says. "If Apophis wishes to send troops down to the surface, a _Goa'uld_ mothership carries five thousand warriors in addition to its crew, and is able to carry more. Additionally, it carries many death-gliders; _al'kesh_ , which are mid-range heavy bombing craft, and _tel'tak_ \-- which are unarmed cargo vessels, but which contain transport rings. Should a _tel'tak_ be landed here, troops and materiels can be ringed down from the mothership to the _tel'tak_ , and in a matter of a few hours, the ring platform inside a _tel'tak_ may be removed and placed in a permanent planetary location to serve as a staging area."

"Oh, that doesn't sound good," Jack drawls.

"But we know where he is, right? The, the, where he's coming from?" she says. "He's still there? We can still stop him?"

"Shau'nac does not believe Apophis' fleet will depart its present location for some days yet, Danielle Jackson."

"General Hammond?" she says. "I know you have orders. I know I didn't see it actually happen in my world. But Teal'c's telling you, too. Apophis is coming and he's going to kill you. Please--"

Jack puts a hand on her arm and squeezes gently. Warning. She shuts up.

#

She's down in Sammy's lab. Sammy's packing.

Dani's chest hurts. "No point to that," she says tightly. _There isn't going to be any place on Earth for you to hide. You should go to San Diego; say goodbye to Mark and the kids while you can._

"Orders," Sammy says brusquely. "They tell me to close up shop, that's what I do. Dani... I'd send you back if I could." They both look toward the Quantum Mirror. It's dark; just a piece of rock. It's going to Area 51 later today. She probably won't ever see it again.

"At least I'd still be alive. For a while." There's not much safety in a _Goa'uld_ -run galaxy. Dani knows that. Is it better to die fast or slow? Not dying at all doesn't seem to be an option.

"There are millions of quantum variations. I know yours is close to ours, but finding the right one -- exactly -- could take weeks. I don't have weeks. If I guess wrong, I could kill you."

Dani looks puzzled. Sammy goes on.

"You were lucky you came to a universe where you didn't still exist. If you'd gone through the Mirror into one where you were still alive, well, two identical objects can't co-exist. Either you both would have died, or ... just you."

"Why me?" She's curious in spite of herself.

"You'd be the most recent arrival, and inherently unstable."

'Inherently unstable.' That's her. She forces a smile. "Maybe there would just have been a really big explosion."

Sammy smiles grimly in return. "There's that."

Jack comes in then, and seems relieved to see her here. She's got a Guest ID -- which gives her limited freedom of the Base -- but she hates running into people who know she -- the other her -- is dead. She's spent a lot of time with Robert in his office -- it was her old one -- the rest in her quarters.

"Dani, let's take a walk. Not you, Carter. You just keep ... following orders."

He walks her back to quarters. It's private there. Sort of. Still cameras. "I know this is hard," he says, coming inside and closing the door behind them.

She shakes her head. They're killing themselves and she can't stop them.

"Don't give up on us," he says. "General Hammond's on the horn right now. He's flying to Washington in a couple of hours to try to change Kinsey's mind."

"We have to do something," she says.

"I know," he says. "But we've got a lot better shot at taking out two motherships if we can go through the Gate at full-strength: at least four SG Teams and a couple of nukes. We can't get that kind of manpower and equipment with the program shut down. Look, when was the last time you slept? Or ate something?"

She pushes her glasses up and rubs her eyes. "I don't know." She hasn't slept since that night at Jack's house. She came back to the Mountain the next day, thinking about the future, and discovered there wasn't going to be one.

"Well get some rest, would you? By tomorrow, I think you're gonna be the only person down here that reads _Goa'uld_ , and Carter's probably gonna need a little help with those mothership blueprints."

"Tell me you won't let him win," she says. She isn't sure herself who she means: Apophis or Senator Kinsey.

"We never let them win," Jack says firmly. "Come on now. Rest. Promise me you'll get some sleep and I'll take you and Carter out for pizza later."

She nods, sure she can't sleep, but Jack's words have given her hope. Nuclear weapons destroyed Ra's ship. They can destroy Apophis's. She sits down on the bed and begins to unlace her boots.

#

General Hammond is in Washington for three days, and during that time the SGC becomes progressively emptier as his staff follows the orders they've been given before he left. The Teams have been stood down and sent home on leave; the Infirmary is on a skeleton staff; nearly everybody on 18 has been sent home and half the techs on 19 are gone. The only people in the SGC are the technical staff, the maintenance crews, the clerical and support people, and the security force.

And SG-1.

And her, of course. She has nowhere else to be. If the Program is shut down, well, it doesn't matter, as Earth is doomed. But she wonders what they think they're going to do with her?

At least there's still plenty of coffee.

She's down in Robert's office again when Jack pokes his head through the door. Robert is closing down the Department practically by himself -- well, and her. There are a thousand things to do; deciding what artifacts get shipped to what archives, just to begin with. She and Robert have been overseeing the packing and crating, with a few breaks back in his office to try to keep up with the endless demands from Area 51 for information they simply don't have any more. If they did the packing right it would take months to clear out Cataloguing and Translation. They're not doing it right. She and Robert have at least been trying to make sure the airmen don't break anything, not that it matters unless General Hammond can win in Washington.

"Okay," Jack announces to the room at large, "the commissary food officially sucks. Come on, you guys, we're going out for lunch."

"I've really got a lot of work to finish up here, Colonel," Robert says.

The quality of silence that follows Robert's remark is profoundly strange. She looks up. Jack is looking at Robert with a very odd expression. Then he looks at her. "Dani?" he asks.

"Pizza or Chinese?" she asks in return. She's already getting to her feet.

"O'Malley's," Jack says.

O'Malley's is busy and noisy and Sammy looks puzzled about being dragged out of the Mountain for lunch; she doesn't have as much work to do as Dani and Robert do, but there's still a lot. Teal'c just looks impassive. He's going to die when Apophis reaches Earth, but he hasn't said a word about it.

Jack waits until the server has taken their orders and left. "General Hammond got back from Washington this morning," he tells them. "Kinsey won't budge. The Joint Chiefs won't move on the basis of Teal'c's info to overrule him."

"What about Teal'c?" she asks. "I mean, they've got to let him go home."

"Oh, they will," Jack says. "Next month some time, General Hammond figures. Kinsey's a compassionate man."

"Next month will be too late," Teal'c observes calmly.

Jack sighs deeply. "Yeah, it will. So I figure we fire up the Gate now. From Chulak, I figure I can get to those other coordinates, maybe do a little damage. I won't have a nuke, but there's still plenty of C-4 in the armory."

Teal'c regards him impassively. "We will go there together, O'Neill."

"And me," she says. "Jack, let me help save at least one Earth. I can help. You know I can."

She sees him hesitate, making up his mind. But he'll take her, she knows he will. It's why she's here and Robert isn't. "I guess if we're going to be walking into a nest of snakes, we're going to need a snake-charmer," he finally says. He looks at Sammy next. "Captain?" Jack says. "This isn't an order. In fact, it's probably treason. If we get back alive -- which I seriously doubt -- you and I are going to be court-martialed."

Sammy smiles. "Yes, Colonel. Thank you. I understand that. I'm going." She hesitates. "What about Robert?"

"Dr. Rothman has a previous engagement, Carter." Sammy's eyes flicker faintly, but Dani knows she understands. Dani's listened to Robert talk over the last few days. He was her friend there, her dead self's friend here. Never really a real part of SG-1. He might have become one with time, but he's not enough a part of them now for them to take him down this way.

And she is.

"All righty then. Let's figure out how we're going to do this," Jack says.

#

After lunch, they spend most of the rest of the day stealing what they need. C-4, weapons, commando gear, a MALP. Getting her outfitted is the hardest; all her gear is gone. They manage. Jack sends Robert home precisely at 1700 hours.

They wait until midnight to make their move.

They couldn't do this at all if the SGC weren't in the middle of being shut down, because the Gate Room and the Control Room would be filled with airmen, SFs, and techs. But General Hammond is in his quarters, and Level 28 is deserted. Nobody even notices the patchwork SG-1 in full commando gear -- plus MALP -- making their way to the Gate Room from the armory. She's carrying her quarterstaff -- Sammy kept it -- her Beretta, grenades, and thirty pounds of C-4. None of them is carrying much besides explosives this trip.

They have to send a MALP through first because they're dead if they walk into the middle of a bunch of Jaffa, but the delay is going to increase the risk of them being stopped before they can get through the Gate. A trade-off, but one Jack insisted on. Jack and Sammy disable all the doors between the Gate Room and everywhere else, but the moment Dani punches in the coordinates Teal'c has given her, warning klaxons begin to sound throughout the Base.

They send the MALP through. Dark on the other side. Sammy switches to infra-red. "Bingo," Dani says, seeing the familiar not-quite-Egyptian motifs appear. " _Goa'uld_."

Sammy sends a radio signal to the MALP to retreat. It will dissolve once it enters the event horizon going 'backward', but they don't dare leave it where it is.

General Hammond will be here in seconds, and he will have no choice but to arrest them all. They run for the Gate.

_Alia iacta est._

#

They're not on a planet. They're not even on a normal _ha'tak_ \-- they get to a window where they can look out and see. They're on something much bigger -- something that can contain a Stargate. And they're trapped.

They have their C-4, but Shau'nac said there were _two_ ships. Even if they blow up this ship, the other will still reach Earth.

"Oh, god," she says. "We've failed."

"Now, now, what have I told you about jumping to conclusions?" Jack says absently. "There's gotta be a way to get over to the other ship. We'll think of something. Now you and Carter go make yourselves interesting while Teal'c and I go talk to the driver of this bus."

"Jack--" she says. She isn't sure what she wants to say. _Don't die?_ They all came here expecting to die.

He pats her on the shoulder. "Run along and play," he says. "We'll rendezvous back at the Gate Room."

For the next hour she and Sammy set charges until all their C-4 is gone; the time they spent going over the intel on _ha'taks_ they got from Teal'c has paid off: Sammy is sure the ship will explode when the C-4 does. Sammy is careful, setting the charges to trigger with both a timer and a radio detonator, though she'll have to be fairly close for the radio detonator to work. Based on the coordinates -- and Teal'c's estimate of the top speed of a _ha'tak_ \-- the ship will take weeks to reach Earth, but even if it's only a few days, Sammy has set the timer to go off in 24 hours, long before the ship reaches Earth. They just need to find a way to the other ship to do the same thing with the C-4 Jack and Teal'c are carrying, though Sammy thinks there's a good possibility the explosion of one ship in hyperspace will destroy both.

Sammy's placing her last few blocks of C-4 on the Stargate itself. Not that she thinks she can blow it up, but there's the possibility the _naquaadah_ will increase the force of the explosion and at least disable the DHD. Teal'c was fairly certain nobody would come to the Gate Room while the ships were in transit -- that's why they picked the Gate Room for their rendezvous point -- but while Sammy's working, they hear people coming and hide.

It's Skaara. _Klorel_. He has captured Jack and Teal'c. There is a form of _vocuum_ linked to the Stargate, and through it Klorel reports this news to Apophis, who orders him to execute them on the _pel'tac_ , where the Jaffa may witness their deaths.

She and Sammy go to rescue them. But everything goes wrong, even though they manage to fight their way onto the _pel'tac_. They don't have weeks or even days. They're in Earth's solar system _now_. They can't get to the second ship -- they don't have Klorel as a hostage, because Jack had to kill him to save her life.

They're trapped on the _pel'tac_ , out of transmitter range of the C-4. And then they're captured.

#

She awakens blind. In the darkness, she hears Teal'c's voice telling Jack this is the aftereffects of a _Goa'uld_ shock grenade, and it will soon pass. She doesn't care. She saw a sarcophagus earlier. Klorel will rise from the dead. She looked into his eyes as he ribboned her. Teal'c was right -- back on Chulak -- when he said she should never let Klorel see her. The thing that gazed at her out of Skaara's eyes had wanted her out of a combination of Skaara's memories and the _Goa'uld_ 's own desire for vengeance, and that can't end well. But it doesn't matter. Even if Klorel decides to keep her alive, it won't be for long. His ship will explode within a day.

By then all the cities of Earth will be gone.

She finds a wall by touch and curls up against it.

"Dani? Hey. Take it easy. We're just having a bad day, that's all. It's going to get better," Jack says out of the darkness.

"Everyone on Earth is going to die," she says.

"Okay," Jack says lightly. "This is _definitely_ the last time I'm taking you anywhere until you learn how to behave."

Her sight comes back slowly, and by the time it does, she can see Jack prowling the cell, looking for a way out. She hears the sound of Jaffa boots in the corridor and gets to her feet. She's not sure what's coming, but she doesn't think it can be good.

But Jack was right and she is wrong. It _does_ get better.

Master Bra'tac is the one who comes to their cell. He's come -- not to rescue them, precisely -- but to ally himself with them. Here, as in the world she has left behind, he has once more become Apophis' First Prime, and for some reason he is here on this ship with Klorel instead of on the other one with Apophis. He tells them the ships are holding off their attack against Earth until Klorel rises again.

Sammy says it's now less than an hour until the C-4 goes off on its timer. They've been unconscious for most of a day, which means Klorel will rise soon. It only took the sarcophagus half a day to revive her when she was killed on Abydos, so even though Jack shot him several times, Dani does not think it can take much longer for Klorel.

Bra'tac says he knows of a way to get to the other ship. There are transport rings on the _pel'tac_ deck. If they can reach them, and make their way to Apophis' ship, there's still a chance. He gets their vests and weapons back -- though he cannot get the packs with the rest of their explosives -- and they make their way upward through the mothership.

They stop outside the door to the _pel'tac_. Bra'tac insists on going in alone, saying they'll know when it is time to follow. A moment later -- even through the door -- they hear the now-familiar whine of the ribbon device.

"Let's go!" Jack says. "Dani, watch our backs."

Sammy thrusts her MP5 at her and follows Jack through the door. Sammy has one of those _Goa'uld_ weapons -- a _zat'nik'atel_. Dani hears gunfire and screams from inside. She's out here because it's safer, but she'd really like to shoot something.

A moment later she gets her chance. Two Jaffa come around the corner and she opens up with the MP5. It rides up in her hands and the noise is deafening. She screams for Jack, but she can't even hear the sound of her own voice over the sound of the machinegun. Some of the bullets glance off the heavy armored Jaffa collars. Most plow right in through the chainmail. One ricochets upward, and one of the Jaffas' faces is gone in a spray of blood. She stares in horrified fascination, barely remembering to release her grip on the trigger as they begin to fall. It's over so fast.

She's doing fine until the third one appears. She starts to swing the MP5 back into firing position again, but she's too late. He lowers his staff-weapon and fires. What they don't tell you about getting hit with the blast from a staff weapon is it doesn't just burn. The pulse hits as hard as a bullet, and she's flung backward as if she's been punched, feeling things snap and give in her chest. It makes her hand clutch the trigger again, and she sprays the corridor with bullets, a jerky uncoordinated burst that catches her attacker across the knees. He bows into the last of the burst and his face explodes.

Then Jack is there, lifting her up. She feels more things tear inside.

"Dani! Dammit!"

He can't be here now. They don't have time. (Though she has all the time in the world now.) "No! Leave me. I'll be dead anyway -- just get out of here -- _go!_ "

"I am not leaving you here!" Jack is still dragging her upright, trying to get her on her feet, and the pain is so bad it's making her cry.

"Get out of here!" she gasps, hitting at him. "You're just going to blow up with the other ship anyway! Go! Just -- go! I'll stay and -- and -- and watch your back." Because she's dying.

He lowers her gently to the deck, and then he's gone. She scrabbles until she gets her hands on the MP5 again. It feels slippery and heavy in her hands -- heavier than before -- and the front of her shirt is wet. But she kicks backward until she has a bulkhead at her back and can push herself into a sitting position. She blinks, forcing her eyes open wide. The corridor is clear.

Blood fills her mouth. Breathing hurts. They had a clear shot at the rings. They've already gone. Maybe they can destroy the other ship. Save Earth, if not themselves. _There's a sarcophagus in the Gate Room. If I can get there I have a chance..._ She drops the gun and rolls to her hands and knees. The movement brings vertigo and nausea and she vomits blood. Something else tears loose inside. She can't get to her feet. She'll have to crawl.

It isn't fair -- physics isn't fair; Sammy told her that once -- if Jack had been hit, or even Sammy, they wouldn't have been as badly hurt. But she's smaller than either of them. The same wound is more serious. Janet used to say...

She inches down the hallway. She's fading fast, and the ship will go soon, but it's important to keep trying. Jack would want to know she kept trying to stay alive, though there won't be any way -- this time -- to bring him that message. Unless there's another Mirror, another double, somewhere, who has survived this. Unless he survives to hear. She'd like to think he will.

The sarcophagus is a long way from here. She'll never make it. Got to try.

_Keep moving._

The floor is slick and hard beneath her palms, but it doesn't feel either cold or hot. Her hands are sweating as she slaps them down. Sticking. Skidding.

_Move._

It's all right, she thinks, to die now. She's done all she can. Helped them find out about Apophis. Helped them destroy at least one ship. Told Jack his Danielle loved him. It doesn't matter much, compared to all the rest, but it matters to her. She loved him, he loved her, they fought for Earth. Enough of an epitaph for anybody, really.

It's getting dark.

_Keep moving._

She slips in her own blood and her hands skid out from under her. The impact makes her want to scream, but she has no breath left for that. She's lost her glasses, and she can't remember just when that happened. She tries to pull herself up onto her hands and knees again, but she can't manage it.

Darker.

_Come on, Indiana,_ she tells herself. She drags herself along the corridor on her belly, clutching at the projections along the walls and kicking back against the floor. Each time she does she only gains a few inches, but it's forward motion. She keeps her eyes closed; it's easier to feel for handholds that way. She feels lightheaded, as if she can't breathe; has a desperate need to cough and knows she doesn't dare. Sammy and Janet are chanting in her head about body mass and relative ballistics and it would all _mean_ something if she could just _focus..._

How long until the C-4 goes off? When it does, Skaara will be free. Where is Amaunet? _Sha're..._

_Keep moving._

Sammy. Janet. Jack. Robert. Teal'c.

_Jack._

_I love you all,_ she thinks, just as her world ends, for a second time, in light.

#

It's November now. In Chicago that's a raw wet cold. He turns up the collar of his jacket. He's not really sure why he's here. She isn't buried here. She isn't buried anywhere. She's a cloud of atoms somewhere between the Moon and Earth. But Indiana's grave is as close as he can get. He guesses it will have to do for both of them.

He didn't bring flowers to the grave. Indy was allergic to flowers, and he's sure Dani was too. It would seem cruel.

Earth is still here, and so are they. The two _Goa'uld_ motherships are gone. He's not sure how he feels about Skaara being dead. He'd like to grieve for him, but he's seen Klorel up close now. So it's almost a release.

He's not quite sure what to feel for Dani either.

He knows however it went down up there, she gave staying alive her best shot. She didn't go through the Gate trying to die; he wouldn't have taken her with them if that was what she'd been after. What happened outside the _pel'tac_ was just bad luck on a bad day. She took out three Jaffa and saved their lives.

And they saved Earth. That would have made her happy, even if it wasn't her Earth.

He looks down at the three markers at his feet. Two end in 1972: Claire and Melburne Jackson. One is dated 1997, the one they placed three months ago. He thinks about what Dani said, that night she was at his house.

_"I'd go back and sit by the grave. It was the only place left that felt like home."_

He wonders if this universe could ever have been home for her, but he already knows the answer is 'no.' Home is where your dead are.

He stands staring at the newest of the three gravestones a moment longer -- _his_ dead -- and then walks away.

#


End file.
